


Across the Universe and Time and Space

by AgentMaryMargaretSkitz



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV), Doctor Who
Genre: Aliens, Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Doctor Who Fusion, Atraxi, Doctor!Leonard, More tags to be added, Planets, Prisoner Zero - Freeform, Star Whale, Starship UK, Time Travel, Weeping Angels are awful, World War II
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-11-20 00:07:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 50,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11324559
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgentMaryMargaretSkitz/pseuds/AgentMaryMargaretSkitz
Summary: When Lily Stein was a little girl, a man and a blue box fell from the sky into her backyard.Years later, the Doctor- a man she calls Leonard Snart- returns and asks her to join him in his travels.





	1. The Eleventh Hour

**Author's Note:**

  * For [MissCrazyWriter321](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MissCrazyWriter321/gifts), [IncendiaGlacies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/IncendiaGlacies/gifts), [TaleasOldasTimeandSpace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TaleasOldasTimeandSpace/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Eight year old Lily Stein befriends a man from the stars. Years later, he returns to save the Earth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (I own neither Doctor Who or Legends of Tomorrow. I'm just a madwoman with a laptop)
> 
> Soooo I'm willing to be that you all think that I've cracked. 
> 
> This idea ended up coming to me last week. I've wanted to do a Raily DW AU for ages (that ship has completely sucked me under) and I was planning on doing the Impossible Girl arc. However, I then remembered "Does it ever bother you, Amy, that your life doesn't make any sense?" and then the next thing I knew I was falling into the hole of making them the Ponds and Leonard the Doctor.
> 
> So after getting a lot of encouragement from fellow Raily fans who loved DW, I ended up going off and writing this while rewatching the Pond Era. Odds are that Captain Canary is going to make an appearance later on.
> 
> With that being said, I hope you all enjoy the craziness!

Lily Stein was in the middle of proofreading a report when she started to hear a noise coming through an open window. The wheezing noises were not normal sounds that she usually heard around the neighborhood. However, they were familiar to her. It had been a long time since she had last heard the groaning, but the very noise brought back memories from that night when she was eight years old.

She hurried over to the window to look out into the backyard. Her eyes widened at the sight of the blue box that she knew hadn’t been there earlier. It was now upright instead of lying on its side. The door opened and a man bolted out of it in a cloud of smoke. Lily sucked in a gasp when she recognized the torn clothes.

No, this couldn’t be. It had to be some trick, maybe one that Sara had cooked up.

“Lillian!” he shouted, running towards the back door of the home. “Lillian!”

She hadn’t gone by Lillian in years. Lily pressed herself against the side of the wall beside the window, keeping an eye on the man. He was trying to open the back door with little success until he pulled out an oblong silver object and held it to the door. It opened for him, and he stepped right inside. A pang of terror went through her heart as she realized that the madman was in her home.

“Lillian! You need to get out of this house!”

Lily looked around the room wildly for anything she could possibly use. All those years he and Ray had spent telling Sara off about leaving her knives everywhere made Lily wish she could get her hands on just one of them now. Instead, she improvised by running up the stairs and into Aunt Dorothy’s old room. Her aunt had bought a baseball bat in the event of any robbers and left it behind when she moved out.  _ ‘You’ve got to defend yourself somehow, Lillian!’ _ she had said when Lily tried to make her bring that bat with her.

Today, Lily was thankful her aunt was stubborn.

“Lillian!” she heard the call come from downstairs. “Lillian, are you here? You need to get out!”

Feet ran up the steps. Lily tucked herself behind the doorway to her own room, bat in hand.

“Prisoner Zero is here,” she heard him mutter close by. “Dammit.”

Prisoner Zero. How much had Sara even told this guy?

Lily exhaled and silently crept out behind the doorway. The man was still trying to jimmy open the door to a spare room that no one had ever used. She was within striking range when the floorboard creaked beneath her. The intruder turned and Lily swung the bat. It smacked him square in the face and made him drop like a stone.

Once Lily made sure he was still breathing, she really saw him. Despite the blood now leaking out of his nose, she recognized him. This couldn’t be a prank by Sara. He was the same man who had crashed into her backyard when she was eight. But he didn’t look like he had even aged a day. How was this possible?

Whatever was happening, Lily wanted to get to the bottom of it.

Lily hurried into her own room and threw open her closet doors. Flicking hangers past, she finally found her Halloween costume from the previous year. Grabbing it off the rack, Lily then moved over to the dresser to where she had stashed the handcuffs Sara had given her on her last birthday (“You might need them someday.”). As soon as she found them, she went back out and handcuffed the intruder to the staircase.

Hopefully, this plan wouldn’t blow up in her face.

* * *

 

_ Eight year old Lillian Stein looked at the crack in her wall over the top of her book. She was happy that her bed was on the other side of the wall as it. It gave her the creeps, especially when she heard the voices whispering about Prisoner Zero from it at night. Aunt Dorothy didn’t believe her when she tried to tell her about it, insisting that it was just an ordinary crack when Lillian tried to call the police about it. Lillian highly doubted that normal cracks in walls had voices coming from them. _

_ “I wish someone would believe me,” she whispered before returning to her book. _

_ An awful, wheezing, groaning noise came through the open window. Lillian’s attention was once again diverted from her book as it started to grow louder before culminating into a loud crash. Climbing out of bed, Lillian wandered over to her window and peered out into the backyard. A large blue box was lying on its side in the wreckage of where her aunt’s gardening shed once stood. Through the smoke coming from it, Lillian could read the words ‘Police Public Call Box’ on the sides. _

_ Maybe someone had been listening. _

_ She grabbed a flashlight and hurried out of her room and down the steps. Aunt Dorothy was out working the late shift and wouldn’t be home for hours, so Lillian didn’t worry about being quiet even as she pushed the creaky back door open. Switching her flashlight on, the young girl walked barefoot across the dewy grass towards the blue box. As she neared it, a pair of doors opened outwards at the top to release more smoke. This only preceded the grappling hook that shot out and caught on the sad little apple tree Aunt Dorothy had devoted so much time to. _

_ Lillian wanted to run, but she couldn’t help but be curious. Whatever was inside couldn’t be scarier than the crack in her wall. Perhaps whoever was in there might believe her about it, or even help her fix it. _

_ A hand emerged from the smoke and grasped the edge of the blue box. Another soon joined it, followed by the head and torso of a man with close cropped hair. He didn’t seem to notice Lillian until he had pulled himself up and swung a leg over the side of the box. An eyebrow was raised in her direction as he straddled the edge of box. Lillian stared at the man, who was dressed in a soaking wet shirt and pants with rips and tears, topped off with a bow tie that looked half done. None of the policemen she had ever seen looked like this. _

_ “Are you okay?” she asked quietly, keeping the flashlight on him. _

_ The mystery man snorted. “I’m not sure about that yet.” _

_ Lillian looked at the words on the box again. “Are you a policeman? Did you come about the crack in my wall?” _

_ He swung his other leg over and slide from the box to the ground. “A crack in your wall?” _

_ She nodded. “Uh-huh.” _

_ “Is it scary?” _

* * *

 

“Mr. Palmer-”

“Dr. Palmer,” Ray Palmer corrected.

“ _ Dr. _ Palmer,” Dr. Ravenwood sighed, glaring at him. “The hospital is grateful for your donations in the past. We are doing everything we can for Sydney. However, you cannot tear me away from other patients who need me with these ludicrous claims!”

Ray nodded. “Ma’am, I’m telling you the truth!”

“You are telling me that all the coma patients called out at once,” the doctor huffed. “Dr. Palmer, you are not a medical doctor, so I’m going to put this simply for you. These people are comatose. They cannot speak.”

“I know that,” Ray replied. “But it was weird. All of them at the same time called out the same word.”

“Which was?”

“Doctor,” he told her. “I figured they wanted a medical doctor, so I went to go find you.”

Dr. Ravenwood sighed. “Wonderful.”

“Yep,” Ray held out his phone to her. “There’s more though.”

The doctor stared at the picture. “This is your brother.”

“I saw him walking around a few days ago,” he told her. “But he lead me on a wild goose chase that brought me to a dead end when I tried to follow him. When I came here, Sydney was still comatose, just like always. It’s not just him either. I’ve got photos of the other patients here too. All of them have been walking around the city, but then I come back here and find them in their comas.   
Dr. Ravenwood furrowed her brow as she looked from the photos that Ray was swiping through. “Dr. Palmer, please come with me.”

“Look, something is happening here-”

“You’re right,” the doctor grabbed him by the arm and dragged him out of the ward. “You need to leave now, Dr. Palmer. You’re disrupting the patients and taking time away from others I need to attend to.”

* * *

 

When Leonard started to groan and wake up, Lily was ready. She pulled out the radio Ray had left behind here once. “Male, early to mid-forties, breaking and entering. I’ve got him restrained, but I’ll take some back-up.”

Leonard blinked his eyes open and frowned at her. He didn’t seem to recognize her. That made sense, given it had been years since he had dropped out of the sky and destroyed her aunt’s shed. She’s grown up since then.

“Don’t move,” Lily ordered, glaring at him. 

“I know the drill,” he replied. “Not my first time waking up in handcuffs. First time getting hit in the face with a bat though.”

“You were breaking and entering,” Lily crossed her arms. “And I’ve got back-up coming, so no funny business.”

“Great, because I’m not in the mood for that either,” Leonard drawled, studying her. “You’re a cop.”

Well, he definitely fell for the uniform. Lily tried not to let her pride of pulling off the con show. “And you’re breaking and entering.”

“What are you doing here? Where’s Lillian?”

Lily stared at the man. “Lillian Stein?”

“Exactly, she lives here. Are you the aunt?”

Lily gave him a cold look. “Lillian Stein hasn’t lived here in a long time.”

It wasn’t technically a lie. She had been going by Lily Stein for long time. It was rare anyone other than Aunt Dorothy called her Lillian.

“Dammit,” Leonard closed his eyes and leaned back against the staircase with a sigh. “How long has it been?”

“Why does that matter?” Lily snapped, pulling out the radio.

“Where is she now?” he demanded. “And don’t call for your backup. If you’re in this house now, then you’re in trouble too. Same goes for whoever else lives here.”

Her finger hovered above the button on the radio. She looked at him. “Start talking.”

“The homeowner would love to hear this too.”

“Good,” Lily stepped toward him. “She’s right here.”

He raised his eyebrows. “So I’m in a house where a cop lives and handcuffed to her staircase. Definitely have had better places to explain stuff.”

“Talk.”

“How many rooms are on this floor?” he asked, leaning forward as far as the handcuffs allowed him.

Lily frowned. “Are you serious?”

“Deadly.”

“There’s five,” she told him. “Same as it’s always been.”

“Wrong. Try six. You missed one.”

“Impossible.”

“Look again,” he nodded. “Especially in the place you know you don’t want to look. You’ll know it.”

Lily followed his instructions. She felt the urge to turn away as she counted door number four, but kept looking. There was a door behind her, the sixth door. All her life she had lived her (aside from going off to college) and she had never even noticed the room.

“That’s never been there before.”

“Wrong,” Leonard shook his head. “It always has. Someone just put a perception filter on it to make you look past it. But now that you know it’s there, you can see it. Whoever put it up is hiding, and I bet they still are.”

She thought back to Prisoner Zero. Slowly, Lily started making her way towards the door. Behind her, Leonard was telling her to back away from it. Instead, she decided to ignore him. It was her house, she had to know what was hiding in this room.

* * *

 

_ “So what’s your name?” the man who called himself Doctor asked as he took a sip from the mug of hot cocoa with mini marshmallows.  _ _  
_ _ Lillian swallowed her mouthful of cocoa. “Lillian Stein.” _

_ “Lillian Stein,” he repeated. “I knew a man once with that last name. Sounds like a scientist’s name.” _

_ “That’s what I want to be when I grow up,” she told him cheerily. _

_ “Good,” the Doctor nodded, frowning up at the ceiling. “Your parents must be heavy sleepers.” _

_ “I don’t have parents,” Lillian replied. “Or siblings. It’s just me and my aunt.” _

_ He snorted. “I used to have a sister. She left me a long time ago though. No one’s left for me now.” _

_ “What was her name?” _

_ A wistful smile appeared on the Doctor’s face. “When we were on Earth once, she called herself Lisa. She made me go by Leonard. Then we had to pick out last names too and wound up with Snart.” _

_ “So your name is Leonard Snart?” Lillian asked. _

_ The Doctor- Leonard- shrugged. “In a way, yes.” _

_ “I like Leonard as a name better than Doctor,” she told him. “You look like a Leonard.” _

_ “Noted,” Leonard took another drink of cocoa. “That aunt, where is she?” _

_ “Working.” _

_ Leonard frowned. “And she left you all alone?” _

_ “I’m not afraid,” Lillian protested. _

_ “Given a man fell out of the sky in a box and is now drinking cocoa in your kitchen, I believe you,” he said. “Which makes one thing clear to me.” _

_ Lillian tilted her head. _

_ “That crack in your wall must something terrifying. Shall we take a crack at it?” _

* * *

 

The room looked like something from a haunted house. Light streamed through the rotted boards that were nailed to the window. Floorboards creaked beneath her as Lily stepped further in. The wallpaper was nearly completely peeled off. Everything in here smelled musty. All these years of living here and she had never known.

“Is there a silver object with a blue point?”

Lily jumped at the sound of Leonard’s voice. “What?”

“It’s mine,” he called out. “It probably rolled under there when you hit me. If it’s in there, find it and get out of there.”

She scanned the room until she located it. The last time she had seen it, she had been eight years old. Since then, it looked the same, just like Leonard. But it wasn’t on the floor, but resting on the stained table. Something slimy coated it.

“You’re sure it’s silver and blue?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“The I found it,” Lily stepped closer to it. “But it’s on a table.”

A string of curses came from outside. “Get out of that room.”

Lily took another step towards the table and reached out for the object. Her nose wrinkled as the slimy substance touched her hand. It didn’t look like any kind of tool she had ever seen before. The sticky slime coating it didn’t feel right either, as if it wasn’t terrestrial.

As she studied the silver object closer, the hair on the back of her neck prickled. Something creaked faintly behind her. Lily whirled in the direction of it, but found nothing. The creaking noise happened again, and the same urge to not look hit her again like it had when she first uncovered the door. She looked out of the corner of her eye and turned sharply. Something wet, slimy, and snakelike was suspended from the ceiling, writhing slowly from side to side.

Its mouth of sharp, piranha-like teeth opened and Lily screamed as something grabbed her hand.

* * *

 

_ Lillian watched Leonard examine the wall with the crack. He was right up next to it, running a hand over it. She didn’t even have the courage to do that ever. Instead, she stood beside her doorway. _

_ “There’s a draft coming through this,” he murmured, running a silver object with a blue end across the crack before staring at it. “Well, it is a crack.” _

_ Lillian sighed. “I know.” _

_ “But not a normal one,” Leonard continued, running a finger over it. “If you tore this wall down, the crack would still be there. It’s not in the wall, it’s everywhere.” _

_ Her eyes widened. “Everywhere?” _

_ Leonard nodded. “It’s a split in the skin of the world. These are two parts of space and time never meant to be near each other. Now they’re pressing against each other to form this crack in the wall. Does anything ever come out of it?” _

_ “Voices,” Lillian said. “They say that Prisoner Zero has escaped. I don’t know who that is though.” _

_ He pressed an ear to the crack and then looked back at her. “So there’s a prison on the other side of the crack. This crack here is like an escape door for it, except someone didn’t close it all the way.” _

_ “So what do we do?” _

_ “Treat like any door you haven’t shut all the way,” Leonard pulled out the silver device. “Open it all the way and slam it shut.” _

_ Lillian gulped. “So you’re going to open the crack?” _

_ “Yes,” Leonard looked over at her. “Nothing from there’s going to hurt you. I won’t let it happen, Lillian.” _

_ “Okay,” she stepped into her room more to stand closer to Leonard. “Promise?” _

_ “Promise,” he agreed, holding up the device. “On three. One...two...three.” _

_ The crack glowed with light and grew larger. _

* * *

 

Lily looked over to see Leonard, now out of his handcuffs, standing beside her. He pulled her out of the room and snatched the object out of her hand. Raising it to the door, he pressed a button on it and the lock on the door clicked shut. Lily frowned at him as he started looking around the floor. She couldn’t believe this was happening to her right now.

“How did you get out of the cuffs?” she asked, staring back at the railing where they were lying.

“Magic,” he told her shortly. “You need to get out of this house now. Tell that backup to stay away too.”

“There’s no backup coming,” she confessed as something started to bang on the locked door. “What was that in there?”

“No backup?” he looked over at her. “Hold on. You’re not even a cop, are you?”

Lily scoffed. “Of-of course I am.”

“Then how come your uniform looks like a Halloween costume?”

Crap. Lily glanced over to where a golden light was emitting from underneath the locked door, then turned back to Leonard.

“Fine, you got me,” Lily held up her hands in defeat. “I’m not a cop. I’m a scientist. But you were definitely breaking and entering.”

“Maybe I was. Not the problem right now.”  
The locked door came crashed outward. Lily snapped her head towards it to see a woman holding a cat. When she was about to relax for a moment, a yowling noise started up, but it wasn’t coming from the bat. The sound was coming from the woman’s mouth and changing into hissing. She bared her teeth, which were the same sharp ones that had been on the slimy creature in the room. 

Lily shook her head. “How-”

“It’s still the creature,” Leonard told her. “It’s just decided to wear a costume.”

“Is it alien?” she asked.

He nodded. “Not a friendly one like I am.”

“Okay,” Lily nodded before realizing what he had said. “Wait, what?”

Leonard opened his mouth, but didn’t get to say his piece when another voice spoke above them.

“Attention, Prisoner Zero. The human residence is surrounded. Vacate the residence or the human residence will be incinerated.”

The woman, Prisoner Zero, started to look around. Lily took the distraction as an opening to run down the staircase. Leonard was right behind her, silver object in hand. She pushed open the back door to get outside. Behind her, he closed it shut and held the device to it. The lock clicked shut.

“How are you doing that?” Lily asked. “How are you controlling the locks on my house? Did you break in while I was out and change them? And what’s even going on?”

“There’s an escaped alien convict in your house, and other aliens want to incinerate your house,” Leonard said as he walked towards the blue box. “Any other questions?”

“Are you seriously an alien?”

“Thought you’d have figured that out by now,” he said as he pulled out a key to try and open the blue box, only to fail. “And of course it won’t let me in yet.”

Prisoner Zero appeared in the window of Lily’s room. She started hissing down at the two of them. Lily grabbed Leonard’s arm to get him out, but he stopped and broke free of her. He approached the shed, a look of disbelief on his face.

“What are you doing?” Lily shouted.

“This wasn’t here before,” Leonard said, tilting his head to the side. “I wrecked the last one.”

“So what? It’s new.”

“Yes, but it’s old,” he turned back to her. “It’s years old.”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “It is.”

He still didn’t seem to put the pieces together. “Why wouldn’t you tell me how long it’s been?”

“Why did you say five minutes?” she shot back.

Leonard stared at her in disbelief. She could see him fitting all the pieces together. Recognition was dawning in his eyes right now. It had taken him long enough. 

“Lillian,” he murmured, shaking his head.

“About time,” she replied. “And it’s Lily now.”

The back door came down, and the woman and her cat stepped out. Lily grabbed Leonard’s hand and took off to the front with him. She was about to get into her car when she realized that she didn’t have her keys. They were still on the counter in her house, which was currently being occupied by an alien that had apparently been living there for years.

“You’re Lillian Stein,” Leonard said, holding his device to the car door. 

Lily heard the car unlock and opened the door on the driver’s side. “I’m Lillian, you’re late, and we need to get out of here.”

“I really overshot it, didn’t I?” he muttered as he climbed into the passenger’s side and held the device to where her keys should have gone.

Lily’s eyebrows rose as the car started up. “What is that?”

Leonard didn’t get a chance to answer. The radio flickered to life and started repeating the same message over and over again.

“Attention, Prisoner Zero. The human residence is surrounded. Vacate the residence or the human residence will be incinerated.”

* * *

 

_ One minute, Leonard was telling her that Prisoner Zero had escaped. He seemed to think that he had escaped within Lillian’s house. Then a loud bonging of a klaxon had echoed from outside and made Leonard take off down the stairs. He had shouted something about engines phasing and burning and how he needed to stop it. Lillian was puzzled how a box could have engines until Leonard told her that it was a time machine. _

_ “A time machine?” she perked up at the thought. She’d read about time travel in books, but her teachers had told her it was impossible. “Really?” _

_ “Yes,” Leonard nodded, pulling the grappling hook from the apple tree. “Except it’ll be destroyed if I don’t go fix the engines. A quick jump to the future and it’ll be fine. I won’t be gone longer than five minutes.” _

_ “Can I come with you?” _

_ Leonard looked back at her. _

_ “Please?” Lillian begged. “I want to see a real time machine.” _

_ “It’s not safe,” he told her. “Five minutes and I’ll be right back for you.” _

_ “Promise?” _

_ He smiled as he climbed up onto the edge of the box. “You won’t even realize I was gone. See you in five minutes, Lillian Stein.” _

_ With that, he pushed himself off the edge and disappeared into the box. Lillian could hear a crash come from inside, although it echoed a little. The doors of the box slammed shut and the same wheezing noise as earlier began again. After watching it disappear, Lillian turned on her heel and ran back inside. The suitcase from her closet was packed within a few minutes with clothes and everything she felt she would need to time travel. She even didn’t notice the open door on one of the spare rooms as she raced back down the stairs with her suitcase. _

_ Lillian pushed the back door open and sat down with her suitcase in front of the broken shed, staring up at the stars. _

_ Leonard didn’t return. _

* * *

 

“So human residence isn’t my house, but the whole planet,” Lily clarified as she followed Leonard outside after he had run out of her work office. “Aliens are going to incinerate Earth because Prisoner Zero won’t surrender, and you’re telling me we have twenty minutes to live- I get all that. But how are the other aliens figuring out now that this is where he’s-”

She stopped as a shadow passed over them. It even seemed to make the sun go darker for a second. But then it was back to normal, as if nothing had happened.

“-always been?” she finished. “That’s never happened before.”

“Well, I doubt you’ve seen Earth get sealed off in a force field to boil before,” Leonard muttered as people around them on the streets stopped and looked up at the sky, all of them taking photos. “Figures. The human race is about to go extinct, but not with a bang or a whimper. Instead, it’s in a social media post. Amazing how you’re all still alive.”

Lily grimaced, feeling shame over her fellow mankind. “So what do we do?”

“There’s no ‘we’ in this.”

“Yes there is,” Lily insisted. “That thing was in my house. It’s hidden there for years and I’m not going to let all of the earth die if we can find a way to turn in Prisoner Zero.”

Leonard stared at her. “You have twenty minutes left to live and you’d like to try and save the planet?”

She shrugged. “It’s probably better to die trying than do nothing at all.”

“Excellent,” Leonard smirked before frowning. “Something’s wrong here.”

“You mean aside from the planet being trapped in a force field?”

“Yes,” he nodded, walking quickly down the street. “Not everyone’s looking at the sky.”

* * *

 

Ray was staring at the picture on his phone when it was snatched out of his hands. He looked up to see a man in a raggedy shirt and pants examining the photo on the screen. Said man then turned around to face him with a cold blue stare. Something about his appearance seemed familiar. He held up the phone in Ray’s face.

“Explain this,” he ordered. “The world’s ending, but you’re taking photos of ladies and cats.”

“Uhhh,” Ray struggled to find words as someone bumped up beside him. 

“Ray?” 

He turned and looked over to see his girlfriend standing beside him in the police outfit she’d worn last Halloween. “Lily? What are you wearing?”

“You two know each other?” the man asked.

“He’s my boyfriend,” Lily told him. “Ray, meet Leonard.”

Suddenly, it all clicked for him. He knew why the man looked so familiar.

“You’re Lenny the Doctor!” he blurted out, turning to Lily. “He’s here?”

She nodded. “Yep.”

“But-but how?” Ray looked between his girlfriend and Leonard. “He was just a cartoon character you made up! It was game for us. He’s only a story. How is this-”

“Boy Scout!” Leonard snapped. “Answer the question. Why take photos of a lady and her cat?”

“Because she can’t possibly be there. I’ve seen her at a coma in the hospital. It’s just her either. I’ve seen all the coma patients walking around town when they should be in, you know, a coma.”

“That’s how Prisoner Zero’s getting the psychic link,” Leonard released him. “They’re a coma, so they’re perfect to copy off of.”

A cat hissed. Ray whirled around with Lily to see the woman who was supposed to be in the hospital in a coma. She gave a poisonous smile before turning into a golden mist and disappearing down a storm drain. Ray’s eyes widened as he turned back to Lily and Leonard.

“She just went down the drain.”

“Very observant of you, Boy Scout,” Leonard remarked. “So do you see this woman often out and about when she’s actually comatose?”

“Yeah,” Ray nodded. “But it’s the other patients too. I took pictures of all of them to show the hospital staff, but they don’t believe me.”

“I’m going to need this,” Leonard said, pocketing the phone. “Wait, Lily- your friend. Not this one, the good-looking one.”

“Thanks,” Ray muttered.

“Oh, you mean Tommy?”

“Ohhhh thanks.”

“Yes,” Leonard nodded. “He had a laptop and I’m going to need it. Take Boy Scout with you to the hospital and evacuate it, especially the coma ward. We need to isolate Prisoner Zero and expose him in his true form.”

“Okay,” Lily nodded as Leonard ran off. “Ray, where’s your car?”

“Just down the street,” Ray pointed towards where he had parked. “Lily, that’s Lenny the Doctor.”

“I know,” she nodded, walking quickly towards the car. “Come on, we have to hurry.”

“Lily, he’s real!” he continued, following after her. “He was just a character.”

“Well, he’s actually real.”

“You always made me dress up like him,” he muttered as he pulled out his keys. “And you always never let me put on the bow tie properly.”

“His isn’t,” she protested.

“Sara always said she was going to marry him,” Ray remembered, grinning. “Too bad she’s off backpacking. She’d have loved this, although probably not the aliens.”

“And if we save the world with Leonard, we can tell her all about it,” Lily told him as she climbed into the passenger seat. “Let’s go.”

* * *

 

When they got to the hospital, it seemed that it was already being evacuated due to some sort of attack. Thankfully, Lily was still dressed in her police outfit and managed to get clearance to get through, claiming Ray was a witness in a potentially related incident. Ray, being familiar with where the coma patients were located, lead her towards that area of the hospital. They had been running, but slowed to a stop when they passed by a nurse’s station and what looked like the aftermath of a fight. 

“The hell…” Lily murmured as she and Ray looked around them.

“Ray!”

A tall man with dark hair who resembled her boyfriend was coming towards them. Lily recognized him as Ray’s brother Sydney, who she knew had been in a coma following an accident.

“Sydney!” Ray hurried forward towards his brother. “You woke up!”

“Yeah,” Sydney nodded. “It wasn’t too long ago. Scared Dr. Ravenwood half to death. But then some woman came in with her cat and attacked her. She killed Ravenwood and I barely got out. You need to leave now. I don’t think she’s human, Ray.”

“She’s not,” Lily cut in. “It’s actually this alien called Prisoner Zero who can take on forms of other…”

She stopped and looked at Sydney again. The man was dressed in jeans and a t-shirt. Ray had a picture of him and Sydney with the latter wearing exactly the same clothes. If he had just woken up, wouldn’t he still be in a hospital gown?

“...people,” Lily finished, realization hitting her. “Oh.”

Ray seemed to get it too and backed up. “You’re not Syndey!”

Prisoner Zero grinned, revealing a mouthful of sharp teeth. “Clothes gave it away, didn’t they?”

“More like you showing concern about me,” Ray snapped, grabbing a mop from an overturned janitor’s cart. He smacked Prisoner Zero with it before pulling Lily after him down a corridor.

The two ran from Prisoner Zero, and Lily realized Ray was taking them around to reach the coma ward. He let her go ahead of him before shutting the door behind him. They braced themselves up against the door, trying to prevent the alien from following after them. Lily’s phone started to ring in her pocket. She quickly pulled it out and answered it as the doors rattled again. “Hello?”

“Lily, I’m at the hospital,” Leonard’s voice. “Where are you?”

“Coma ward,” Lily replied. “Prisoner Zero’s trying to get in after us!”

The doors were pushed open violently. Lily went sprawling forward, phone sliding out of her hands. She turned around to see Prisoner Zero approaching her, sharp teeth bared in a demented smile on Sydney’s face. Ray was scooting back beside her, eyes wide.

“Little Lillian Stein,” he sneered. “All these years I got to watch you grow up. You never had a clue I was just down the hall, hiding out from the Atraxi. I knew all about you waiting for your Doctor to come and show you the stars. He might have saved you from me earlier, but this time he won’t.”

“Wanna bet?”

Prisoner Zero turned around. Lily could see Leonard striding down the hall towards them. She smiled in relief as he walked around into the ward and around Prisoner Zero calmly. There was a glint of triumph in his eyes as he came to stand beside her and Ray.

“Glad I made it here,” he addressed Prisoner Zero. “I’ll have plenty of time now.”

“Time?” Prisoner Zero asked. “What could you possibly do, Timelord?”

“Not a smart question to pose to me,” Leonard replied. “And feel free to strip off the disguise. Whatever you do, the Atraxi is still going to find you.”

“And then kill me,” Prisoner Zero snarled. “If I’m going to go out, why not take a whole planet with me? Make myself memorable.”

“History will only remember you as a monster for that. Besides, what’s stopping you from opening a crack to leave?”

Prisoner Zero snorted. “I didn’t create the crack. Does the Timelord really have no idea where they came from?”

“What’s he talking about?” Ray asked.

Leonard stayed silent, but Lily could feel an anger radiating off him.

“Ohhhh you don’t know,” the alien convict taunted. “How does it feel to be the clueless one, Doctor?”

Leonard didn’t give in.

“The universe is cracked,” Prisoner Zero told them. “The Pandorica will open. Silence will fall.”

Lily frowned. Ray looked just as confused. Leonard’s face was neutral, but Lily guessed he probably didn’t know either. Then he started to smile.

“Could you tell me what the clock says?”

Prisoner Zero looked around at the digital clock above the doorway of the war. Lily and Ray also glanced up. Instead of reading the time, it was now all zeros.

“Clever trick,” Prisoner Zero said, turning back to Leonard.

Leonard smirked. “Maybe, but that’s just a small piece of a much larger game. While you were busy in the hospital, a team of experts from around globe were able to execute a plan I laid out. All over Earth, the word is out about Zero. The Atraxi fleet will have noticed it if they’re smart enough, which they are. They’ll be able to figure out it all started as computer virus that can be traced right back to the phone of one Raymond Palmer.”

Leonard held up Ray’s phone as a bright light shined through the window. Lily and Ray took a few steps back, shielding their eyes from the light.

“I know you think they can’t track you in that form since they just tracked down a phone,” Leonard continued. “But the Boy Scout has pictures of your disguises, so they’ll have a pretty good clue of what you look like.”

Prisoner Zero looked furious. Lily started to grin.

“All of this done, and still I have time to spare,” Leonard held out his arms. “Who da man?”

Ray stared in puzzlement. Prisoner Zero rolled his eyes, unimpressed. Lily pushed down the urge to facepalm.

“Okay,” Leonard lowered his arms. “Not my speed in this form. That’s not happening ever again.”

“You think you’ve bested me?” Prisoner Zero asked. “You might have outed all my forms, but you’ve missed the one I’ve had years to perfect.”

Lily suddenly felt light-headed. Her vision began to blur and tilt before everything descended into darkness.

* * *

 

“Lily!”

Leonard whirled around to see Lily Stein collapse onto the floor. That boyfriend of hers, Ray, was on his knees beside her. He was shaking her shoulders, pleading her to wake up. Leonard moved briskly over to the fallen woman.

“Lily!” he bent down beside her. “Lily, come back. Stay awake, Stein. Stay with us.”

“Uh, Leonard?” Ray nudged him. “There’s a new problem.”

Leonard looked up at the new form Prisoner Zero had taken. “Who the hell is that?”

“You!” Ray stared at him. “You do know what you look like, right?”

Leonard ignored him. He had been busy running around trying to stop the Atraxi and Prisoner Zero from destroying Earth that he hadn’t been able to really get a view of what his newest face looked like. Truth be told, he definitely liked it.

“You’re linked to her,” he said, standing back up. “Why do you look like me?”

“But I am copying her,” a young voice said from behind his lookalike before an eight year old version of Lily Stein stepped out. “Poor Lily. You know she dreams that you came back for her that night and took her time traveling. How you’ve disappointed her.”

Leonard shook his head. “She’s dreaming of me not because of that. It’s because she can hear me.”

He returned to where Lily was lying. Ray was holding her hand, a concerned look on his face.

“Lily,” Leonard ordered. “”Listen closely. I know you can hear me, but actually listen. You saw Prisoner Zero in that room I told you not to go in. You know what he looks like. Remember what he really looks like. Dream about the room and what you saw in it.”

The little Lily of Prisoner Zero’s form stiffened. “No! Stop it!”

“Every detail, Lily,” Leonard encouraged, smiling. “Keep dreaming.”

Prisoner Zero started to glow with golden light. A wet crackling sound filled the room as it shifted into its true form. The light from earlier returned to shine through the window, surrounding Prisoner Zero. The alien hissed and writhed angrily in it.

“No matter what form you take,” Leonard said to Prisoner Zero. “Your best impersonation is of yourself.”

“Prisoner Zero is located,” the Atraxi boomed from outside as the movements of Prisoner Zero began to slow down. “Prisoner Zero is restrained.”

Prisoner Zero swiveled to face Leonard as the light surrounding him grew brighter. “Silence, Doctor. Silence will fall.”

With that, Prisoner Zero vanished. Lily moaned from the floor and started to sit upright. Leonard walked over to the window and stared out at the Atraxi ships flying away. The sky shimmered, signifying that the force field had been lifted from the Earth. All the humans could go back to their lives now. However, another race had nearly almost destroyed this Earth, a violation of the Shadow Proclamation.

Leonard might have been a thief in the box with more names that he could count, but he did care.

“It’s all over, right?” Ray asked hopefully as Leonard backed away from the window. “We’re all going to be okay?”

“Ray?” Lily mumbled. “What’d I miss?”

“Lenny the Doctor saved us.”

Leonard turned away from the connection he was trying to establish to the Atraxi and glowered at Ray. “You don’t get to call me that, Boy Scout. And it’s not over yet.”

“What?”

The connection locked onto the phone. Leonard held it his ear.

“You really think you can just up and leave?” he snapped. “Maybe you’re after an escaped criminal, but one could do it without violating Article 57 of the Shadow Proclamation. You nearly wiped out a Level 5 planet and you didn’t think anyone would notice? The humans might not give a damn about their Earth, but I do. So get back here now!”

He cut the connection before the Atraxi could respond. Then he looked down at his clothes. Regeneration and a rebuilding TARDIS had not been kind to his last face’s outfit. Besides, he didn’t even like it anymore, especially the bow tie. The last regeneration thought it looked great. Now, it felt tacky.

“Catch,” he said before throwing Ray’s phone back to him. “By the way, your bill’s going to be pretty big this month.”

“Did you just bring them back?” Lily asked, rising to her feet.

Leonard nodded as he stripped off the bow tie.

“You brought aliens back?” Ray squawked. “You got rid of them and now you brought them back? They were trying to kill us, and they weren’t cute like E.T.!”

“I gave them what they wanted, but there’s nothing stopping them from coming back,” Leonard told her. “You said it yourself- they were trying to kill you. I’ll make sure they don’t return one day to finish that job.”

He started to walk off, but heard them following him.

“Where are you going?” Lily asked as they rounded a corner. “What do we do?”

“Wait for me on the roof,” he instructed. “I’ll be up there soon.”

“Why?” Ray asked.

“I need to make an impression,” Leonard told them. “To do that, I need new clothes.”

* * *

 

Lily made it up to the roof with Ray just as something descended down to hover above them. It had a sort of crystalline structure with a large eye right in the center. Lily remembered the large eye that had started at her from the crack Leonard had opened when she was eight. Now, she wasn’t sure whether it was a ship or the Atraxi itself. How was it even hovering when there were no propulsion systems in sight? Was it something to do with alien life matter coming into contact with the atmosphere?

The door to the roof opened up, and Leonard emerged. Gone was the raggedy outfit that she had always incorporated into the cartoons and games. Now he wore a dark shirt with black jeans and boots. A jacket so dark blue it was almost black topped off the look. Lily had to admit that he looked a lot better now.

“Why are you doing this again?” Ray asked as Leonard stepped past him towards the Atraxi.

“Leaving might be good, but I prefer never returning,” he replied before turning to the Atraxi. “The Doctor will see you now.”

The eye dropped down, held to the crystalline structure by a crackling line of electricity. Lily shuddered as she felt its gaze on her. Ray looked somewhere between disturbed and curious as a stream of light from the pupil scanned Leonard.

“You are not of this world.”

“So what?” Leonard responded. “Neither are you. The difference is I’ve put a lot more work into it. All you wanted was to burn it to find a fugitive.”

“Is this world important?” the Atraxi asked.

“Important?” Leonard sounded offended. “This is the residence of a sizable human population, a vast array of species, thousands of beautiful things, and a peaceful alien or two. How is it not important?”

The Atraxi didn’t respond.

“My turn now,” Leonard stepped forward. “Is this world a threat to the Atraxi? Yes or no?”

An holographic image of Earth appeared from the same light that came from the pupil. Images flashed by. Lily could pick out a few major historical events among them.

“No,” the Atraxi said.

Leonard crossed his arms. “Are the people here guilty of any crime in the Atraxi lawbook?”

More images. “No.”

“Last question,” Leonard was starting to smirk now. “Tell me, Atraxi. Is this world protected?”

Monsters were appearing now in the holographic orb. Robots smashing through windows. Flying pepperpots multiplying in the sky. An army of what looked like potatoheads in spacesuits. Lily gaped at all the images. All of them had to be aliens, but she had never seen or heard anything about them before.

Ray looked just as puzzled by the images. “What the..”

“You think you Atraxi are the first to threaten this world?” Leonard asked. “You’re one of many who have tried. All of them have failed. Do you know who happened to them?”

The faces of different men were coming up now. None of them were the same, but Lily had a feeling that they were all connected. Leonard’s face was the last to appear among them. Once it had, the orb faded, leaving Leonard standing before the eye.

“That’s right,” Leonard said. “I’m the Doctor.”

Lily started to smile. All those years of people thinking she was crazy for believing that a man in a box had fallen from the sky, and now she was watching him tell off an alien. She was definitely in her right mind for this.

“Basically,” Leonard looked up at the sky before back at the Atraxi. “Run.”

The eye snapped back up into the hole reserved for it in the crystalline structure. From the roof, Lily, Ray, and Leonard watched as the structure began to spin quickly and rise away from them. It flew away and up into the sky until they could no longer see it anymore. Leonard turned away from it to look back at them.

“Are they gone now?” Lily asked. “Like...for good?”

“Yes,” Leonard pulled something from his pocket and smiled slowly.

“Those were aliens,” Ray said slowly, still staring at the sky. Lily gazed up with him. “I’ve seen aliens now.”

“Me too,” Lily nodded before turning back to where Leonard was, or at had been. He was gone now, save for the open door to the roof.

Lily ran towards it with Ray behind her and hurried out of the hospital. They had to maneuver around patients being brought back in, but caught sight of a car speeding off in the direction they’d arrived in. Ray brought his car around and drove her back to her home, where they found the other car left by a neighbor’s house.

The same wheezing noise she had heard both as a child and earlier in the day started up again as Lily approached her house. She broke into a run around the side towards the backyard. By the time she skidded to a stop, the blue box was dematerializing. Ray stopped a little past her and gaped at it until there was only empty air.

Lily closed her eyes, remembering how she had sat in this very backyard with her suitcase, waiting for Leonard to return.

* * *

 

_ Two years later _

Lily bolted upright from her bed when she realized that the familiar wheeze wasn’t happening in her dreams. She hopped out and scrambled over to her window, almost tripping over her dress for tomorrow. When she pushed the curtains aside, she was greeted with the sight of the blue box in her backyard. For some reason, Leonard was back again.

Tossing on a jacket, the scientist made her way outside to see what was going on. As soon as she was out the back door, Leonard was emerging from the box. He was dressed in the same dark clothes she had last seen him in. Yet again, he hadn’t changed one bit.

“Are aliens invading again?” Lily asked as she approached him, hugging the jacket close to her body.

“Fortunately for the Earth, no,” Leonard told her. “I ran out on you earlier without explaining. I wanted to make sure the TARDIS was back to normal, so I went out for a quick spin. Everything seems to be in working order, and I think she’s ready for the big stuff now.”

A quick spin? Lily tried not to sigh. It was the whole five minutes business all over again.

“You’re back though,” she murmured. “Why?”

“What’s wrong with coming back?”

“Nothing,” she shook her head. “I didn’t think you would again. Why are you even here? Are you giving back the clothes?”

“I actually happen to like them,” Leonard told her, leaning against the box. “Especially this jacket. I saved your planet, Lily. Is it wrong to take some clothes as payment for that? There’s actually a planet where it is, you know? I’d appreciate knowing if there’s more like it.”

Lily let the sigh out this time. “You’re a really alien, aren’t you.”

Leonard nodded. “Correct.”

“Okay then. So why are you back on Earth?”

“Because I promised someone they could come along with me in my time machine,” he replied. “And even though I made that promise to a little girl, I think the adult version still wants to see what’s out there.”

“You couldn’t have done this two years ago?” Lily crossed her arms, leaning on the opposite end o the blue box, the TARDIS he’d called it.

“Two years ago…” Leonard murmured before shaking his head. “I overshot again, huh?”

“Yeah, I’m just glad you came back before I become a grandmother,” she replied. “But what makes you think after all this time that I’m going to agree to go in a time machine with a madman?”

“What’s stopping you?”

There were a number of things Lily could think of. Ray. Her job. Her life. Her aunt. Her wedding tomorrow.

“Lillian Stein,” Leonard continued. “I’ve kept you waiting a long time. Maybe too long. Now, you don’t have to wait any longer. There’s a whole universe inside that box, and there’s even more waiting out there beyond Earth. What do you say?”

Lily looked at the blue box. Ever since she’d been eight, she’d dreamed of being able to travel through time. Now, the opportunity was right in front of her to take it. No more waiting, just doing.

“Is it really a time machine?” she asked.

Leonard smirked and snapped his fingers. “And a spaceship.”

The door beside her opened. Lily gave it a push with her hand. Her jaw dropped when she saw the interior of it. Leonard gestured for her to go in, so she did.

“It’s bigger on the inside,” she uttered, a smile coming to her face as she spun around in a circle.

“They all say that,” Leonard chuckled as he closed the door behind them and walked up to an enormous console.

“I’m in a time machine that’s bigger on the inside,” Lily whispered before looking down. “And I’m wearing pajamas.”

“There’s a wardrobe around here somewhere if you want to change clothes.”

Changing her outfit was the last thing on Lily’s mind right now. “How is it bigger? What kind of technology is this even? Is it from the future? Is it alien?”

“Time Lord tech, Gallifreyan, no, and yes in that order,” Leonard answered. “All of time and space at our fingertips. Anything that has ever happened or ever will is waiting out there. The question is where to first?”

Lily walked over to the console. “I never said I was coming.”

“Then how come you stepped inside?”

“Scientific curiosity.”

“Last time I was here, you told me you were a scientist.”

“And I still am,” she told him.

“And you don’t want to see the universe?” Leonard asked.

“No!” Lily blocked his path. “I do! But...I have to be back for tomorrow. Can that happen?”

“It’s a time machine,” he said. “Of course you’ll be back by tomorrow. All I’d need is a time.”

Lily gave him a deadpan look. “You’ve been late the last two times.”

“Guilty,” Leonard dipped his head. “I promise I’ll have you back with plenty of time for…”

“Stuff,” Lily said.

Not a complete lie, but not telling the whole truth. Leonard eyed her suspiciously as he turned towards the console.

“You’ll be back in time for your stuff,” he promised as he manipulated various devices on it.

Lily leaned against the console. “Why do you want me to travel with you? Aside from a promise to a little girl.”

Leonard flicked his eyes to look up to her. “I don’t need a reason other than the promise. Besides, you’re a scientist, one of the nicer ones I’ve met. You seem like someone who wants to see the universe.”

He wasn’t wrong there. The prospect of going further than any astronaut was exciting to her. But she sensed that there was something more going on. Leonard was hiding something from her.

“Also it’s nice to have someone to talk to,” he added, glancing at the monitor beside him on the console. Lily tried to catch a glimpse, but he switched it off before she could. “Aliens need friends too, you know.”

“Fair enough,” Lily nodded, looking around at the great expanse that surrounded her. “This is surreal.”

“Everyone seems to go through that the first time they come through those doors,” Leonard said.

“Yeah, but after all these years of dreaming what’s inside, I’m finally here!” Lily grinned, laughing a little at the end. “Everyone told me that you weren’t real, that it was all a dream. It made me start to think that you were some kind of madman with a box.”

“I prefer ‘thief’ to ‘madman’,”Leonard shrugged. “But I’ve been called both. One day, Lily Stein, your life might depend on the madman more than the thief.”

Lily turned her head towards him sharply. “Seriously?”

“Perhaps,” he smirked, turning back to the console. “Ready?”

She nodded, a grin coming to her face.

“Adios, Central City,” Leonard pulled a lever down. “Hello, everywhere.”

The whole box started to shake. Lily whooped as she grabbed onto the console. She flashed a grin over at Leonard, who returned it. There was so much around her and she had no idea how any of it worked. But curiosity had her wondering how it did. It was as though she had been looking through a keyhole since she’d meet Leonard, but now the door it had belonged to had opened to reveal so much more than she’d ever expected.

Hello, universe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And they're off!
> 
> Reviews=Love


	2. The Beast Below

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leonard and Lily arrive in the future on Starship UK.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Woo! This ended up being a whooper of a chapter. Expect a few references to other things in DW throughout this one.

_ My name is Lily Stein. When I was eight years old, a man fell from the sky into my backyard in a blue box. No one believed me when I told them he was real, so he became an imaginary friend. Tomorrow, I’m getting married. But then my imaginary friend came back the night before my wedding with that blue box. _

* * *

 

“How come it looks like a blue police box when it’s really a time machine?” Lily asked, walking around the console.

“It’s a police telephone box,” Leonard corrected.

“Fine,” Lily shrugged. “Why does it look like a police telephone box when it’s really an alien time machine?”

“Camouflage. When the TARDIS lands in a new location, it scans the environment, analyzes the surroundings, then takes the appearance of something that would blend in without questions.”

Lily frowned. “So it took the form of a police telephone box in a Central City backyard?”

“The chameleon circuit broke when I was in London in 1963,” Leonard admitted. “And ever since then, it’s been a British police telephone box.”

“Have you tried fixing it?”

Leonard shook his head. “I like it this way better.”

“Well, it’s probably easier to find your time machine when you’re in some place like ancient Rome so you can get in and not wind up running into a statue or something,” Lily said, leaning against the rail.

“My sister told me the same thing once.”

“Lisa?” Lily asked, remembering the conversation from when she was eight. “If you’re an alien, that means she’s alien too, right? Does she also have a TARDIS? Where is she? Did you two just part ways or is she on whatever planet you’re from?”

Leonard’s hands stopped moving the dials. Lily knew she’d probably touched on something with his sister that he didn’t want to remember.

“I’m sorry, I’m babbling,” she apologized. “It’s just...it’s another dimension in a little police box! I’m excited. This is incredible!”

Leonard relaxed slightly. “You think this is incredible? We haven’t even started yet.”

He stepped away from the console and walked down the stairs to the doors. Lily followed after him. She wondered what was waiting outside the doors of the time machine as he pulled them open. Leonard stepped to the side, letting her get the full view.

It was space. Lily covered her mouth as she looked out on it. In Central City, it wasn’t always easy to see the stars. Right here, she could see them twinkling in constellations she couldn’t even recognize. There was even a small nebula far away from where they were. It was all beautiful.

“Is this real?” she asked softly, turning to Leonard.

“Go out and see for yourself.”

She frowned. “I’d die.”

“And I extended the air shell to make sure that doesn’t happen,” he replied. “Now go.”

Lily walked to the very edge of the box. Sucking in a breath, she stepped out into space. A laugh escaped her as she found herself floating. Leonard grabbed her hand as the TARDIS coasted gracefully amongst the stars. This was real and happening now. She was in space without a spacesuit and there was an alien looking out for her.

No one would believe her, but Lily didn’t care.

“So what do you think?” Leonard asked as she was brought back inside.

“It’s a spaceship,” Lily giggled. “And it’s a time machine. This is actually happening. I’m in space!”

“Told you so,” he said smugly.

“Oh my god,” she stared out at the stars. “I think my dad would have loved this.”

Leonard looked down at her. “What was his name?”

“Martin,” Lily told him. “Why?”

“No reason,” he shrugged before glancing down. “You might have liked going out into space, but I think you’ll see it’s about to get better.”

Lily followed his gaze to see what seemed to be an entire city beneath them, drifting through the stars. “What is that?”

“Starship UK,” Leonard told her, stepping back from the door and over to the console. Lily sat down on the edge of the TARDIS, letting her feet hang out into space. “In the 29th century, solar flares roast your Earth and make the human race skedaddle. Every country has their own method of getting off the planet until things simmer down or they find a new home.”

Lily twisted around to look at him. “So England has a giant spaceship?”

“Northern Ireland’s on there too,” he added. “Come inside and close the doors so we can land.”

“That’s all of Britain,” Lily murmured as she closed the doors. “It’s all on a spaceship, and we’re going to land on that spaceship?”

“Yes,” Leonard nodded.

“And can we go out and see it?” Lily asked, unable to stop herself from grinning at the prospect of walking on a future spaceship that held all of England.”

“Yes, we can. But before we do, you need to know that when I travel, I follow a code. If you’re going to travel with me, you have to follow it too, Lily.”

“A code?”

“We observe only,” he told her, giving her a steely gaze. “Stay out of other people’s business or affairs of the planet…”

He trailed off into silence, his eyes drifting to the monitor. Lily looked up at it as a small shudder went through the TARDIS. A little girl dressed in a school uniform sat against a bench by the wall. She was crying there, all alone with no one around her.

“I can do that,” she murmured softly, her heart aching for a little girl. “I know how observation works, even though it’s hard to watch something happen when you know there’s something you could do. But you do this all the time, right? Is it hard to be so cold and detached and emotion-”

Suddenly, Leonard was next to the little girl on the screen. Lily looked over her shoulder realizing he was no longer next to her. Turning back, she saw him say something to the little girl. She nodded at his words and then hopped off the bench, walking offscreen. Leonard then turned and looked directly at her.

“What the…” she shook her head as Leonard smirked. He’d already gone ahead.

Lily backed away from the console and hurried down the steps to the TARDIS doors. As she opened them, a bicycle nearly ran her over. She squeaked and jumped back as it passed by her. Then her eyes drifted upwards to see the ceiling stretching high above her. Her jaw dropped in amazement.

“So what do you think?” Leonard asked, coming up to her.

“I’m in the future,” Lily murmured. “Actually hundreds of years in the future on a British spaceship. I...oh my gosh, I’ve been dead for centuries.”

“Wouldn’t recommend dwelling on that,” he told her, leading her down a stretch that held dozens of market stalls. “Look around you instead. Tell me what’s wrong here.”

“Wrong?” Lily wrinkled her nose as she observed her surroundings. “This is the future for me. How much have standards of right and wrong changed? Or do you mean something  _ physically _ wrong?”

“You tell me.”

Lily spun around quickly, catching sight of the bicycle she’d seen when she exited the TARDIS. “How about the bicycle? We’re on a spaceship, a bike is kind of odd there.”   
“That’s pretty big coming from you,” Leonard snorted. “Especially with a ‘It’s Always Coffee Time’ shirt.”

Lily looked down and remembered she was still wearing her slippers and pajamas under her jacket before turning red. “This is my worst nightmare, except I’m not announcing a new discovery in front of some of the biggest names in the scientific community.”

“That’s very specific,” Leonard remarked. “But look around us.You’re a scientist after all. Observe.”

She followed his instructions, taking in everything as carefully as she could. An intercom announced that the London Market was a crime-free zone. Nothing seemed to be vastly futuristic. If anything, it was the basics. Bicycles passed by in designated lanes. Clotheslines were strung about behind the stalls. There was a young boy sitting outside one of them, playing with a top.

“It seems ordinary, but there’s always secrets hiding,” Leonard continued. “Something isn’t right here…”

They walked past what seemed to pass for a pub or something. Leonard picked up a glass filled with water and placed it on the ground. Lily frowned at him as she watched him bend down and study it. The surface of the liquid was perfectly still. 

“What is going on?” the owner of the drink, a redhead with bushy eyebrows, demanded.

“I’ve been assigned to examine the water in this area,” Leonard flashed a charming smile at the man. He pulled something from his pocket and held it up to him as he handed the glass back. “I’ve been told there’s a lost fish somewhere who answers to Jim.”

“Are you serious?” the redhead asked, glaring at them.

Leonard held up his hands. “I just do what the higher-ups tell me to do. Not sure why they’re making me do this though.”

“Who knows with them? They’re bonkers.”

Leonard nodded and started walking again. The redhead now furrowed his bushy eyebrows at Lily, taking in her outfit. She shrugged and hurried after Leonard.

“Why did you put the glass on the floor?” she asked. “And what was that you showed him?”

“Psychic paper. It makes people see whatever I want them to see. It’s got me into some great places.”

“Awesome,” Lily grinned as they approached a row of benches. “But what about the water? How come you did that?”

“Think it over, Stein,” Leonard told her as they approached rows of benches. “I spy a familiar face.”

Lily scanned the benches until she saw the same little girl from earlier. She was still crying, but it wasn’t audible. A pang of sympathy hit her as she watched the girl rub her sleeve against her cheeks. The scientist sat down on one of the benches in the back as Leonard took a seat beside her.

“Why do you think she’s upset?” Lily asked. “Think she was bullied?”

“Maybe,” Leonard shrugged. “But she’s crying and not making any noise. When a kid cries, it’s because they want attention. They’re hurt or scared. If a child cries silently, it’s because they can’t stop. Anyone who’s raised a kid knows that.”

“Have you?”

Leonard ignored her question. “Parents are out here and walking past her, but none of them are asking what’s wrong. That means they know why she’s crying, and it’s over something they want to avoid discussion about. Something has them scared. It’s watching their every move, so it knows if they talk about it. Starship UK has become a police state.”

“Great,” Lily muttered sarcastically as a crowd of people passed by. When they were gone, so was the little girl. “She’s left now.”

“Probably home to Deck 207. It’s located on Apple Sesame block, Dwelling 54A. Her name is Mandy Tanner.”

Lily frowned. “How do you know all this?”

Leonard smirked and held up a flowery red wallet. “I lifted this when I was asking if she was alright earlier.”

“So you stole from a little girl?”

“It’s called multitasking,” Leonard shrugged before handing it over to her. “Beside I told you I was a thief. Now, you get to return it to her. Maybe you can ask about the creepy smiling booth boys?”

Lily peered around and saw what he was talking about. There were robots made to look like middle aged men inside little booths with curtains behind them. Two were in close proximity to her and had happy smiles on their faces. Still, Lily shuddered at the sight of them. They looked like a plot device in a horror movie. However, with everything else was battered and dirty and seemed well-used, the robots were pristine and spotless.

“No one’s been near them,” she murmured.

“Exactly,” Leonard nodded. “Ask Mandy what makes people afraid of them.”

“You want me to go after a girl to return her wallet that you stole and interrogate her?” Lily clarified.

“I borrowed it. Besides, she’ll get it back in the end. It’ll be a win-win.”

“Whatever,” Lily turned the wallet around in her hands. “So while I run after a schoolgirl in my pajamas, what are you going to do?”

“Stay out of trouble,” he told her smugly.

She raised an eyebrow. “Why do I have a feeling you’re bad at that?”

He chuckled as he stood up. “You’ve got good instincts then. I’ll see you in half an hour.”

He sauntered off, leaving Lily alone on the bench with holding a stolen wallet. Before he got too far, she called out to him.

“You told me we don’t interfere. Does that change when there’s a crying child?”

She didn’t mean her words to be harsh, but she could see Leonard stop and stiffen. He swiveled around slowly to meet her gaze. There was a deep look in his eyes, as if he was caught in a memory.

“Yes,” he answered before walking away.

* * *

 

“Are you certain?”

“I saw him myself. Will you tell her?”

“We have to. After all, we’re under orders to.”

“Understood.”

“Keep watching him, and that woman he’s with too,” the white haired man said, ending the call before dialing a different number.

“Yes?” the voice of his superior answered.

“My apologies for the interruption, but there has been a sighting on London block. A man, specifically.”

“Did he do the thing?”

“According to my informant, yes.”

“Then I’ll take a look on the monitors.”

* * *

 

“You’re following me, aren’t you?”

Lily spun around to see Mandy Tanner standing beside some large barrels of the level they were on. She’d used the lift to get down here in order to find the girl. Part of her was reminded the back alleys of Central City as she walked around. The only difference was she was centuries into the future with an alien, and they weren’t even on Earth.

“I saw you in the marketplace,” Mandy continued stepping forward.

“Oh,” Lily nodded before fishing out the wallet. “Uh, I found this over there...in the market. You must have lost it.”

“Huh,” Mandy took it, a puzzled look on her face. “I don’t remember dropping it. Thanks, miss.”

She began to walk away. Lily followed after her until Mandy stopped at what looked like a sort of construction site. Keep Out signs were posted in front of a red and white candy striped tent. Mandy started to back away from it.

“What’s that?” Lily asked her.

“We have to go back,” Mandy explained, looking up at her. “There’s a hole.”

“A hole? Really?”

“Yes,” Mandy sighed, exasperated. “There’s a hole in the road. We can’t get through that way. But there’s a travel pipe down by the airlocks if you have stamps.”

Lily started to approach the barriers that had been set up to block the road. In her childhood and some adulthood days, Sara had always been the adventurous one, running off into places she wasn’t supposed to be. Lily did try to stop her friend, but Sara insisted that she needed to ‘break a rule now and then’. She’d told Lily to not let little stuff stop her, but Lily had pointed out that a lot of said ‘little stuff’ had been responsible for Sara getting into trouble.

Time to make Sara proud now, even though she wasn’t here. But something was too weird about this to just turn back.

“What are you doing?” Mandy asked her as she stepped the space between the barriers.

“Taking a look for myself,” Lily answered, studying the outside of the tent. “What’s through there other than the hole? Is there something in it?”

“No one really knows. We aren’t supposed to talk about it.”

Lily examined the padlock on the front of the tent that kept it sealed. “About what exactly?”

Mandy’s voice was softer now. “You know...below.”

“So because someone says no, then you don’t go after it?” Lily asked. “If everyone did that, then we would still probably be in caves.”

She turned back to the lock. Digging around in the pockets of her jacket, Lily smiled as she pulled out a hairpin and some paperclips. They must have been put in there a while back to be put somewhere else and she’d just forgotten about them. Picking out the hairpin, Lily stuck it in where the key should have gone. She’d only ever seen Sara do this a few times, and usually it had been peeks between being the lookout for her.

“You sound American.”

“I am,” Lily gave Mandy a grin. “Do you get visitors from there on here?”

“No. They stay on their own ship. All the countries stay on their own ships. Only the government can talk to the other ships.”

“Pity,” she lamented, fiddling with the pin. “An exchange program would be cool here.”

“How’d you get on here if you’re American?” Mandy inquired.

Lily shrugged. “I’m...kinda passing through with someone I know.”

“The man you were with in the market? Is he your boyfriend?”

“No!” Lily couldn’t contain her snort, but her thoughts drifted to Ray. Her husband-to-be was probably in the middle of his bachelor party hundreds of years ago. He had no idea that she had run off to go time traveling with Leonard. Hopefully she’d be able to make it back in time. “I’m actually getting married. To a completely different guy, not the one you saw earlier.”

“Oh,” Mandy said. “You’re getting married?”

“Yeah,” Lily smiled. “If things go well.”

“When?”

That was a loaded question with time travel thrown into the mix. Lily tilted her head from side to side. “A long time ago for you, tomorrow for me. At least that’s what I think will happen.”

The lock finally clicked open. Sara would probably be proud of her right now. Lily smiled as she undid the ropes connected to the padlock.

“Are you coming?” she asked Mandy.

“No!” the girl exclaimed, sounding horrified.

Lily felt a sort of deja vu hit her and how she’d responded in a similar way to some of Sara’s childhood escapades. “Fine. Wait there then.”

Something whirred behind her, but Lily ignored it and pushed the flaps to the tent aside to enter. Inside, it was dark save for the some flickering lights. She could only just make out something sticking up from the ground. Grabbing some sort of flashlight with a crank, Lily started to wind it, aiming the beam at whatever was coming up. Sure enough, there was a hole in the road, but something wet and slimy had erupted from it.

“What the…?”

Then she realized the thing was moving. It reminded her a lot of Prisoner Zero, and Lily half expected there to be a head at the end of it. Slowly, she angled to beam up, feeling relieved to see what looked like a barbed end rather than a viperfish head. The relief evaporated when the end shot down at her. Lily dodged it, dropping the light. The thing came down at her again, but she stumbled back out of the tent to fall on the ground.

When she looked up, there was a group of men in cloaks surrounding her. Around their necks were large keys that looked like they were meant to wind up clocks. It made Lily think of some sort of futuristic order of monks. Before she could say anything to them, one raised his hand to her face. Mist shot out of the ring on it, and Lily’s eyes closed before she fell back onto the ground.

* * *

 

Leonard placed a hand on the wall of the engine room. He couldn’t feel any sort of vibration. Just like the water in the glass had looked earlier, things were completely still. That didn’t exactly fit on a spaceship. Hopefully Lily, smart as she was, would figure that out soon.

Reaching over to the fuse box, he used the sonic screwdriver to open it. Inside, the power cables were disconnected. When he looked a little closer, Leonard realized that these were false. Either he was in a fake engine room, which was doubtful, or Starship UK wasn’t powered by any engines. Something else was keeping the country moving through space.

Something moved to his right. Leonard turned sharply, finding no one there. However, a glass of water now rested in the once empty hallway. With a frown, Leonard abandoned the fake fuse box and walked over to the glass. Just like the one in the marketplace, the surface of it was still and unmoving.

“The impossible truth in a glass of water,” someone whispered. “Not many people see it.”

Leonard lifted his head to see someone in a cloak and mask walking towards him.

“You see it though,” the stranger continued. “Don’t you...Doctor?”

Whoever this was, they’d heard of him. “How do you know me?”

“Hush, or they’ll hear us!” the stranger ordered. “They are everywhere. It’s hard to avoid them. But never mind that. Tell me what you see in that glass.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Don’t waste my time. I saw you at the marketplace. You put a glass of water on the floor and then came here to the engine room. What about it made you come here?”

“Nothing,” Leonard replied. “And that’s what’s wrong with it. There’s no engine vibration on the deck. With a ship this size, you would feel it anywhere. That water should have moved.”

“And you thought you’d go snooping.”

He shrugged. “I’m good at that. And I’m glad I did. This room’s a fake. Power couplings aren’t connected at all.”

The stranger stared at him. Leonard knocked on the wall, smirked at the echo that came from it.

“Wall’s hollow too. So let’s cut the crap. There’s no engine for Starship UK, is there?”

“Exactly.”

“Then how is this ship traveling through space?”

“The impossible truth,” the stranger said. “We are traveling among the stars aboard a spaceship that could never fly.”

Leonard looked over at the fake fuse boxes and then to the stranger again. “You wouldn’t happen to know what’s behind it would you.”

“Alas no,” the stranger shook their head. “A darkness is lying at the heart of this nation and threatening all of those on board. You have to help us, Doctor.”

Leonard shook his head. “I don’t have to do anything.”

“Then why are you still here?” the stranger asked.

Whoever they were, they had him.

“You’re our only hope,” the stranger continued, holding out a device to him. “Your friend is safe. This will take you to her, but you must go quickly.”

Leonard took it, examining the screen. Then he turned back to the stranger. “Who are you? And how exactly do you know about me? How can I find you once I get Lily?”

“I am Liz 10,” the stranger told him before turning and walking down the corridor. “And I will be the one who finds you.”

The lights flickered. When they stabilized, the stranger, Liz 10, disappeared.

* * *

 

Lily woke up in a chair. When she cracked her eyes open, she was met with the sight of one of the creepy booth robots. The sight of it made her jolt upright, gazing about her wildly. She wasn’t on the road anymore by the tent. Instead, she was in some sort of room with a few old televisions in front of her.

“Welcome to voting cubicle 205C,” a male voice announced. “When you exit, please leave this installation as you wish to find it.”

Lily stood up, confused. When she looked in front of her, she noticed a table with three buttons. There were two circular ones that said ‘Protest’ and ‘Forget’. A larger rectangular one beside them said ‘Record’.

“Starship UK recognizes the right to know for all those who reside aboard,” the voice continued. “A presentation of Starship UK’s history shall begin shortly. Your identity is being verified on our electoral roll.”

Lily’s eyes widened. She was American, not British. But then again, it did say that everyone who resided on the Starship had a right to know. Maybe there had been some Americans on the ship when it first took off.

“Name,” the voice stated as one of the televisions changed from static to an official-looking screen. “Lillian Amelia Stein.”

So far so good.

“Age.” 

Lily watched as her age was listed out and couldn’t hold back a small laugh. They actually had it in the thousands and were going with it.

“Marital status,” was announced, and Lily sat back down and leaned forward.

‘Information Unavailable’ appeared on the screen. “Unknown.”

“That’s a let down,” she muttered, slouching back.

“Nationality detected: American.”

Lily straightened back up. “Uh-oh.”

“Due to residency aboard Starship UK, you do hold the right to know,” the voice told her. “You have now been placed on a watchlist due to your nationality.”

“Fun,” Lily muttered. She was going to become worse than Sara before the end of this.

All the screens flickered to life now. An older man was on them now with a British flag in the background. It almost looked like a newscast in a way, although Lily sensed it wasn’t.

“You are here because you want to know the truth about Starship UK,” the man said. “And I am talking to you because you are entitled to know as a resident. When this presentation finishes, you will have a choice. You may either protest or forget the events you see here.”

That sounded somewhat ominous to Lily. Something fishy was happening.

“If you choose to protest, understand this. If just one percent of the population do likewise, the program is to be discontinued and all citizens will face the consequences of it.”

Lily’s eyes widened, but the video wasn’t over.

“If you choose to accept the situation, which we hope you will, then press the ‘forget’ button. All of the information you are about to be given will then be erased from your memory. You will continue to enjoy the safety and amenities of Starship UK without the burden of the knowledge of what has been done to save the residents.”

She swallowed, looking between the two buttons. Slowly, she placed a hand closer to the ‘protest’ button.

“Here, then, is the truth about Starship UK and the price that has been paid for the safety of its residents. May God have mercy on our souls.”

A stream of images passed over the screens. The next thing Lily knew, her hand was planted down hard on the ‘forget’ button. She was out of her chair, her whole body shaking. Lily removed her hand from the button, unable to remember why she’d pressed it. Like the video had warned her, she couldn’t remember any of the presentation. Text scrolled across the screen to read ‘Message Waiting’. When it opened, Lily was greeted with her own terrified face.

“This isn’t a trick at all,” on screen her said quickly. “You have to find Leonard and get out of here. This is going against everything you would normally do, but there are too many lives at stake. Don’t keep investigating. Both of you just have to leave! You and Leonard have to get off this ship!”

The message ended and a door opened to her right. Lily wrapped her arms tight around herself, fear filling her from the message she’d heard. Outside, Mandy was rising from a bench with Leonard. The latter was staring at her as the message started replaying again.

“Lily,” Leonard said as she stopped the message. “What did you do?”

She shook her head. “I don’t know.”

* * *

 

“A memory wipe definitely happened here,” Leonard said once the screwdriver finished giving him a readout of the light above the chair Lily had sat in inside the voting room. “You lost twenty minutes.”

“I was going to protest,” Lily murmured. “Why did I decide to forget?”

“Everyone chooses forget,” Mandy said from the doorway.

Leonard turned toward her. “Even you?”

“I’m not eligible for another four years,” Mandy fingered the strap of her schoolbag. “Any time after you turn sixteen, you can watch the film and then choose. Once every five years, you do it again.”

“Once every five years, anyone who votes then decides to forget what they learned,” Leonard sighed. “Interesting.”

“How come you don’t know about this?” Mandy asked.

“I’m not from around here,” Leonard answered, approaching the screens. “The movie isn’t even playing for me.”

“But it played for me,” Lily reminded him. “Except I’m on a watchlist now.”

“Nice milestone. But it played because you’re human, Lily. I’m not.”

Lily crossed her arms. “But you look human.”

“You look like a Time Lord, but you’re anything but one,” Leonard responded, pulling the sonic screwdriver out again.

Lily’s eyebrows narrowed as she stepped up beside him. “Should I be offended?”

“Maybe. But Time Lords did come first.”

Lily perked up. “There are other Time Lords? Are they going about the universe too? Do they have TARDISes?”

Her words reminded him of the Time War. How he had been the one to burn Gallifrey, to burn his home. How his sister had cut ties with him and set off on her own just before it happened. Had she made it out alive? Or did he kill her just like the rest of them…

“Leonard?”

Lily was staring at him with concern now. “Are you alright?”

“Just fine,” he replied, returning himself to the present. “There used to be more Time Lords. They’re gone now, except for me.”

“Oh.”

“I don’t like to talk about it,” Leonard told her. “Or remember it.”

Lily nodded. “Sorry.”

“It keeps me from focusing on what I do,” he continued. “Every time, every day, every second. This right here.”

He turned his gaze to the ‘protest’ button and turned to Mandy. “Do you know anyone who’s ever pressed the ‘protest’ button?”

Mandy shook her head.

“Then it’s your lucky day, kid.”

Lily’s mouth opened as he slammed his hand down on the ‘protest’ button. The doors to the voting room slammed shut, cutting Mandy off from them. A whirring noise came from the booth in the room. Leonard turned to see the head of the robot turn from a pleasant face to one with a demonic expression. Below them, the floor rumbled.

“What are you doing?” Lily shouted.

Leonard smirked a hole started to open in the floor. “Bringing the government down.”

* * *

 

Falling down a chute the night before her wedding had been the last thing Lily had expected to happen when she walked into the blue box earlier. She had screamed the entire way down before landing down on something with a splat. Everything around her was wet and slimy and smelled putrid. Whatever it was, she was soaked in it. Leonard was on his feet, looking just as wet.

“Why are there always slimy things whenever I’m involved with you?” Lily moaned, thinking of Prisoner Zero and the barbed tail that had attacked her earlier in the tent.

“Are you sure it’s not you?” he drawled as he scanned the red-lit cavern they were in with his sonic screwdriver.

She rolled her eyes and sat up. “Where are we?”

“Six hundred feet down and in the heart of the ship,” Leonard told her. “I don’t know where this is. It’s not a cave.”

Lily cringed as she looked around her. “I think it’s like a compost dump. I see food waste.”

Leonard walked around, his footsteps squishing. “Definitely organic material. All of its coming from feeder tubes on the starship.”

“Great,” she muttered sarcastically, catching her balance after slipping on something. “It’s wet and slimy and it feels like I’m on a trampoline. I’m very much enjoying future compost heaps.”

A low groaning echoed around them. Leonard stopped short. “I think there’s something more to it.”

“Such as?”

“You won’t freak out when I tell you what it is, will you?” he asked.

“That’s a reassuring way to start it off,” Lily said. “Just spit it out. I can take it.”

“It’s a tongue.”

“A...tongue?”

“A tongue,” Leonard confirmed. “We are currently on an enormous tongue.”

“Ew,” she cringed. “Ew. Like...”

She pointed to her own mouth and Leonard nodded.

“Okay, so this whole place is a mouth,” Lily shuddered. “That’s not disgusting at all.”

“There’s worse places to be,” Leonard told her.

Another thought hit her. “How are we getting out? We’re in a huge mouth of...something!”

“I’m not sure yet. But if this is the mouth, how big do you think this is? Imagine the size of the stomach.”

Something growled in the distance.

“I don’t really want to find that out right now,” Lily said as she shook her head.

“With you there,” Leonard agreed. “Getting is probably priority now.”

“I don’t think we can get back up those tubes,” Lily told him, looked up at where they had come out of. “And I don’t want to get digested.”

“Then that leaves one way out,” Leonard pointed ahead of them at two long stretches of enormous teeth were resting together. 

The tongue shifted below them as another groan echoed out. Lily went sprawling forward, wrinkling her nose as she fell into the saliva. Leonard fell with her too, drawing out his screwdriver.

“What’s happening?”

“Swallow reflex is kicking in,” he shouted. “But I’ve got an idea.”

“Which is?”

“Activating the chemoreceptors!”

Lily felt the word stir up faintly in her memory, but the function eluded her. “Remind me what those are for again?”

“Consider it an eject button,” Leonard said as he climbed his feet and extended a hand to her. 

Lily grabbed his hand and pulled herself up as she realized what was happening. “Oh no.”

A gurgle echoed around the mouth. Far in the distance, Lily watched a wave of something surged towards them. She grimaced when she realized what it was. Hopefully she could keep her mouth and eyes shut when it hit her.

“Hope you’re not too fond of your dignity,” Leonard told her, still holding onto her hand.

Lily wanted to scream, but instead kept her mouth and eyes shut.

* * *

 

They wound up waking up in an overspill pipeline, relatively unharmed aside from being covered in sick and smelling to high heaven. There was a door to get out, except it was operated by pressing a forget button. On the other end of the hall were two booths with creepy robots. The situation was trying to force them to forget what they had seen, except they couldn’t. Something was living at the heart of the ship, and Leonard was determined to find out what it was.

“Maybe playing this game worked with the other humans here,” Leonard said as the booth boys’ faces rotated to angry. “But I’m not human. I won’t leave and forget what I’ve seen.”

“Me neither,” Lily added from beside him. “Wait, can those things hear us?”

“Maybe,” Leonard shrugged, unsure. 29th century human technology wasn’t his strongest suit. “But they’re in booths. What are they going to do to us? Drop us in another hole?”

The booth boxes opened up and the occupants rose to their feet. They started to walk towards Lily and himself, their faces rotated to full on demonic mode. The scientist beside him gulped.

“Did you know they could do that?” she asked.

Leonard shook his head as they backed away from the robots. “No.”

They were getting close to the door that wanted them to forget. Suddenly, it opened and a woman in a red cloak came striding through. She fired the guns in her hands at the robots, creating a shower of sparks as her bullets hit them. The robots dropped like stones after three shots apiece. Leonard realized this was the same stranger who he had encountered in the engine room earlier, sans mask.

“Guess you were right about finding me,” he remarked as the woman, Liz 10 he remembered, reholstered her guns.

Liz smirked at him before approaching Lily. “You must be Lily. Liz 10.”

“Hi,” Lily smiled weakly. “I’d shake your hand, but I’m kind of gross right now.”

“Fair enough,” Liz said as Leonard spied another person on the other side of the now open door. “You two remember Mandy? Brave young girl, isn’t she?”

The girl waved as she stepped into the room.

Leonard frowned at Liz. “How did you know we were down here?”

Liz tossed him a device similar to the one she’d given him to find Lily earlier. “Was tracking you off the gizmo I gave you to find Lily. I’ve been keeping an eye on you two. You’re pretty resourceful.”

“You have to be when you’re about to be digested.”

“So,” Liz nodded up at the ceiling. “What’s the big fella doing here?”

“You know,” Leonard said, handing her back the device. “Or you knew. You’re obviously over sixteen, so you’ve voted and then chosen to forget.”

“Wrong there,” Liz shook her head. “Never forgot, never voted. I’m not technically a British subject.”

“Then who are you?” Leonard asked, stepping closer. “And how do you know me?”

“You two met before?” Lily asked.

“She found me in the engine room,” Leonard explained. “Although it’s actually a fake engine room. But back to my question for Liz. I need answers.”

Liz smiled. “You’re not hard to miss, not with the stories I’ve been brought up on. Everyone in my family has heard them.”

Lily’s eyes widened. “Whoa.”

Something clanked behind them. Leonard looked back to see the robots starting to shift upright. Whatever Liz had done to them had only been temporary.

“They’re repairing themselves,” Liz said. “It won’t be long until they’re up again. Everyone out!”

Liz went out of the room first. Lily followed with Mandy, and Leonard brought up the rear, sonicing the door shut. Once they had gotten far enough away from the pipe, Leonard jogged up to the front.

“How do you know who I am?”

“The Doctor,” Liz laughed. “You’ve been all over the royal family. Especially the Virgin Queen, you bad, bad boy.”

That escapade had gone down in the last few years of his previous regeneration. At least he knew why she had wanted him dead prior to it when he was visiting Shakespeare. But Leonard realized who Liz 10 was now. By the look on Lily’s face, she had worked it out as well.

“Elizabeth the tenth,” he said as Liz drew out her guns.

“Took you long enough-DOWN!”

Leonard ducked, and Lily pulled Mandy down with her. Above them, Liz fired on two booth boys that had been following them. They fell to the floor just like the ones in the pipeline. Liz gave a laugh of triumph.

“I’m the bloody queen, mate,” she told them. “Basically, I rule.”

Yeah, he could definitely believe that.

* * *

 

Liz got them through another door, telling them she was taking them to a high speed Vator. Lily assumed that it was some sort of elevator, but she wasn’t certain. As they shut the door behind them, they passed by a barred wall. On the other side were the same barbed tails like Lily had seen inside the tent on the closed road. These ones were more active, slamming themselves into the barrier. Leonard cocked his head to the side and approached the bars.

“Any idea what they are?” Liz asked.

“I saw one of those up top,” Lily told her. She still couldn’t believe she was talking to the future queen of England in her sick-covered pajamas. “It had come up through a hole in the road.”

“It was connected to the creature,” Leonard said. “So are these. It’s growing through the ship’s mechanisms.”

“Like an infestation?” Liz asked.

Lily watched Leonard shake his head. “I don’t know.”

“Well, someone’s been helping it,” Liz snarled. “They’ve been feeding my subjects to it. Come on. Let’s keep moving.”

Liz stormed off with Mandy trailing behind her. Lily started to follow as well, but noticed Leonard was still staring through the bars. She stopped and walked back. The message she’d left for herself earlier rang in her ears again. The creature had to be what she’d been talking about, but why did she and Leonard have to stop investigating it?

“Leonard?”

He glanced over at her. “Lily, I should have never brought us here.”

She thought of the message in the voting booth again. “Should we leave now?”

“No,” Leonard’s eyes darkened and he set off in the same direction as Liz. “Not until we find out what’s going on.”

* * *

 

“So you do get thirsty a lot?” Leonard asked as he stared at the glasses of water that took up much of the floor in Liz 10’s bedchamber.

The queen shook her head. “It’s a reminder that every single day, my government is up to something and not telling me what it is. It’s my duty to find out what it is”

“That’s one way to go about it, your Majesty,” Lily remarked from where she was standing beside the door.

“Don’t bother with titles,” Liz said. “Liz is fine enough.”

“The queen goes undercover to investigate her own government,” Leonard picked up the mask Liz had been wearing earlier when she met him in the fake engine room. “Don’t hear that every day.”

“Secrets are being kept from me, Doctor,” Liz said coldly. “I don’t have a choice. Ten years I’ve reigned, and I’ve been working at this the entire time. Yet you work out more in one afternoon than I’ve ever gotten.”

Leonard turned the mask over in his hands. It was made of porcelain. The craftsmanship was expert on it. But it was old, older than ten years. Something wasn’t right here.

“How old were you when you came to the throne?” he asked.

“Forty.”

“You’re fifty now?” Lily nodded in approval. “I mean this in the best way possible, but you don’t look it.”

“They slowed down my body clock,” Liz explained. “It keeps me looking like the stamps.”

“So you always wear this in public?” Leonard asked, holding up the mask and walking over to her bed.

“Undercover isn’t exactly easy for me.”

Leonard looked down at the mask again. “No straps or ties on this. It’s air balanced porcelain. It stays on by itself because it’s been perfectly sculpted to your face.”

Liz shrugged. “So what?”

Before Leonard could go on, the doors to Liz’s room opened. A group of men in hooded robes entered. Liz protested their entrance into her chambers as they filed into a line across the room. Leonard passed the mask over to Lily. 

“Ma’am, you have expressed interest in the interior workings of Starship UK,” one man said when Liz asked again what they were doing once again. “You will come with us now.”

The queen of England rose from her bed and walked over to stand between Leonard and Lily. “Why would I do that?”

The man’s face rotated around to reveal that of a demon booth boy. Leonard glared at it.

“What the hell?” Lily shook her head. “They’re booth boys too?”

“Half booth boy, half human,” Leonard stepped forward towards one. “Like a hybrid.”

“I don’t care what they are,” Liz told the newcomers. “I am still their queen. Tell me whose authority this is being done on.”

“The highest authority, ma’am.”

“I am the the highest authority!”

“Yes, ma’am,” the hybrid said. “You must go now, ma’am.”

“Where?” Liz demanded. 

“The Tower, ma’am,” it turned to Leonard, then Lily, and finally Mandy from where the girl was hiding behind the queen’s bed. “All of you must go to the Tower.”

* * *

 

As the booth boy/human brought them to the Tower, Lily heard a zapping noise coming in spurts. To her left, through a grate, she could see more of the barbed things writing about below.

“Where are we?” she asked Leonard.

“I think it’s safe to assume we’re at the lowest point in Starship UK,” he answered. “Or in another word, the dungeon.”

Lily looked around her. “Yeah, I get that vibe.”

“Hawthorne!” Liz broke away from them to approach a white haired man. “So this is where you hide yourself away. Mind you, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do.”

A group of children entered the room in a single file line from another entrance. Lily gaped at them. “There are children down here!”

“Protesters and citizens of limited value are fed to the beast,” the man called Hawthorne explained. “However, it doesn’t eat the children.”

Lily’s blood boiled. There was no way these children could be protesters, being under sixteen and all. That meant they were classified as citizens of limited value. Her hands clenched into fists at how someone had considered these children to be of limited value society. She could tell my the darkness that was entering Leonard’s eyes again that he felt the same anger she did.

“Do you know you’re the first adults spared by the beast?” Hawthorne continued. “You’re extremely lucky to be alive.”

“Lucky,” Lily could see Leonard roll his eyes. “If lucky gets us in the torture chamber of the Tower of London, I’d hate to see what unlucky gets us.”

“This isn’t a torture chamber,” Hawthorne told them.

“Sure it is,” Leonard nodded and walked away towards somewhere. Lily followed after him to reach a small circular ring. “You just can’t tell because you aren’t being tormented.”

Lily looked down to see what was a part of a brain exposed. “Which part of the brain is it?”

“You don’t know?”

Lily gave him a deadpan look. “I specialize in nanotechnology, not neurology.”

“Either it’s the exposed brain center on the creature’s brain that they are torturing relentlessly,” Leonard murmured as a beam of light shot from a contraption above and struck the exposed tissue. “Or the accelerator to make this starship go faster.”

Liz shook her head. “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Oh!” It all came together for Lily then. “The water glasses! There was no vibration, no engine!”

“Finally figured it out, didn’t you, Stein,” Leonard gave her a brief smile. “Thought you would have worked it out sooner.”

“I’m in the future and I almost got digested today,” Lily replied, pointing a finger at him. “I get a pass. But I get it now. There are no engines on Starship UK! This creature is what’s keeping the starship going.”

“Exactly,” Leonard glared at Hawthorne. “There is no infestation, no invasion. This is what you have instead of an engine. Down here is your base of operations to torture it every single day to keep it moving.”

Hawthorne showed no emotion, but Liz looked horrified. Lily bit her lip, wondering if other countries were living off the backs on similar creatures and torturing them too. Leonard, meanwhile, was opening a grate cover to allow one of the barbs to come out. Lily watched as he drew out his sonic and aimed it at the barb.

“You haven’t been able to hear its cries since they’re out of human hearing range,” he hissed. “Well now you get to hear them.”

He pressed down on the screwdriver. A pained moan reverberated around the room they were in. Lily looked at the exposed brain, flinching as it was zapped again. This poor creature, who was saving the human race, was getting tormented just to keep a country journeying through the stars.

“Stop it!” Liz ordered. “Please, Doctor.”

Leonard took his finger off the screwdriver’s trigger and walked back over to her. However, Liz was approaching Hawthorne instead. “Who did this?”

“We are acting on instructions of the highest authority.”

“Which is me,” Liz stated coolly. “And I say the creature is to be released immediately.”

No one moved.

“Immediately!” Liz repeated, but Leonard stepped up to her, mask in hand.

“Liz,” he held out the mask. “Take another look at your mask.”

The queen took it from the alien. “What about it?”

“This is an old mask, at least two hundred years old,” Leonard said. “Practically an antique. It must have been sculpted by a very skilled craftsman over two hundred years ago. It fits your face perfectly.”

Liz raised an eyebrow. “Doctor…”

“They did slow your body clock,” Leonard continued. “But you aren’t fifty. Try three hundred instead. You’re probably setting the record for the longest reign.”

Lily shook her head in disbelief. She hadn’t seen that coming and by the looks of it, neither had Liz.

“You still look great,” she told Liz.

But Liz was shaking her head too. “It’s only been ten years. I know how long I’ve been on this throne, and it’s been for ten years!”

“Exactly, but it’s been the same ten years over and over again,” Leonard said. “And it always ends up leading you to the same place every time.”

He walked away from the exposed brain. Lily kept her distance as he lead Liz to a table that had the same set-up as the voting booth Lily had been in earlier. There was a ‘forget’ button, but the other one didn’t read ‘protest’. It said ‘abdicate’.

Liz looked even more horrified now. Lily didn’t blame her in the slightest.

“What have you done?” the queen asked Hawthorne.

The white haired man gave his answer calmly. “Only what you have ordered. We work for you, Mum. The Winders, the Smilers, all of us.”

“ _ Creepy future monks and booth boys have proper names now _ ,” Lily thought to herself as Hawthorne turned on the television screen. Liz’s face appeared.

“If you’re watching this,” the Liz in the message said. “If  _ I _ am watching this, then I have found my way to the Tower of London...again.”

* * *

 

When Liz’s message concluded, Leonard and the others knew everything. They knew about the Star Whale whose back Starship UK rested on. The last of its kind had come to Earth as Britain was struggling to leave Earth, so humanity had built the starship on it and then rode on its back to safety. If Liz wanted to keep the program going, then she had to press the ‘forget’ button. If she picked ‘abdicate’, her reign would end and the Star Whale would be released. The starship would disintegrate as soon as the whale left them, killing everyone.

Lily covered her mouth. “I voted to forget. I told myself we needed to leave. Why would I still do that after seeing this?”

“You knew that I’d have to make an impossible choice if we stayed,” Leonard told her, closing his eyes for a moment. “You didn’t want me to pick between humanity or the alien. You tried to save me from that choice, Lily. That was wrong.”

The brunette looked ashamed, ducking her head. It didn’t dull the anger inside Leonard though.

“You don’t decide what I need to know or not to know,” he added coldly.

Lily shook her head. “I don’t remember doing it!”

“But you still did it,” he snapped. “That still stands.”

He glared at the woman standing in her pajamas. When Leonard had returned to her house, he thought that the adult Lily would be a good fit in the TARDIS. She seemed to have a curiosity for the world. Leonard had thought she would enjoy the universe. However, he didn’t like people deciding what he should do. He was his own person capable of making his own choices.

“I’m sorry,” Lily told him. “Is that what you want to hear? Because, yes, I regret it now. I made a choice I shouldn’t have, and I regret it. I am sorry.”

“Save it,” Leonard said coldly, making his mind up. “When this is done, I’m bringing you back to your own time. And you better hope I don’t make you late for your stuff.”

“All because I made a mistake!” Lily shouted as Leonard walked over to one of the control panels that monitored the Star Whale’s vitals. “It was a single mistake, and I can’t remember doing it! Everyone makes mistakes. I bet even you have made them.”

Gallifrey came back into his mind, but he pushed the thought aside. “Maybe I have. But those ones aren’t relevant right now.”

Lily didn’t say anything more, but still glared at him. Leonard ignored it and focused on the panel as an idea came to him.He began to adjust the dials to achieve what he needed to do.

“Now what are you doing?”

“The worst thing possible. I’m going to send a massive electrical charge through the Star Whale’s brain,” he told her. “It’ll knock out the higher functions so the ship still flies but the whale won’t feel it.”

“And basically leave it a vegetable,” Lily finished, her tone icy. “And you could let yourself do that.”

Leonard looked back up at her. “There are three options here, Lillian. Option one- the Star Whale continues to live in agony for hundreds more years while humans keep choosing to forget. Option two is to kill everyone on this ship. And option three is to murder an innocent creature as painlessly as possible. It’s going to hard to be known throughout the universe as the Doctor after that one. Maybe I should take on The Oncoming Storm instead?”

“There has to be something we can do,” Liz Ten said, stepped forward now.

“No,” Leonard ordered. “Nobody human talk to me right now. Not after what you have done.”

He turned back to the control panel as a door opened and a line of children filed in. Mandy shouted out and ran over to a young boy. Leonard tuned them out as he worked to up the charge that was being shot into the Star Whale. He wished that there was another way to do this without damaging the Star Whale, but he couldn’t see one. There was no way he would let himself permit the creature to live out its days in torture or to condemn millions to death by letting it go. After Gallifrey, he had always done everything he could to prevent another extinction level event if he could.

“Leonard!” Lily ran over to him. “You have to stop now!”

Leonard moved his hand away from the dial as Lily bolted over to Liz 10. She asked the queen to give her her hand before dragging her over to the voting pad. Leonard realized what she was doing then and abandoned the panel to run over to them. “Lily, don’t even think-”

The queen’s hand went down on the ‘abdicate’ button. The sounds of something unlocked echoed throughout the room, signifying the creature was free. A noise from the Star Whale filled the Tower before a massive shudder went through it. Leonard grabbed onto the booth as it occurred, staring at Lily in disbelief. When it stopped, she met his gaze calmly.

“What did you do?” he asked her.

“We’ve increased speed!” Hawthorne reported before she could answer. He sounding surprised.

“Well, the pilot’s no longer being tortured, so that’s what’s causing it,” Lily told him with a grin.

Liz 10 was shaking her head. “It’s still here. Why?”

“The Star Whale wasn’t a miracle  like past you said it was in the message,” Lily said. “It volunteered. There was no need to torture or trap it- that’s on you. It came because it couldn’t stand to watch your children cry in pain as they were left to die.”

Leonard looked at the exposed brain. Such a simple solution, and he’s nearly damaged the Star Whale’s brain instead.

“What if you were ancient and kind and alone?” Lily continued, looking over at him. “If you had no one left, no future, what couldn’t you do then? If you were that old and kind and the last of your kind, then you couldn’t stand there and watch children cry. It’s hard to do that no matter how old you are.”

Leonard smiled.

Maybe he’d let Lily stick around.

* * *

 

Lily found Leonard where Liz 10 had said she had seen him on the monitors. He was staring out through a window at the starship’s towers and the stars ahead of them. She walked over to him, Liz’s mask in hand. As she drew up beside him, she could see that the Time Lord’s face was pensive. He was still probably dwelling over the events of earlier. Lily knew that she was, and would be for a while longer.

“Liz 10 gave us a gift,” Lily told him, holding out the mask. “Her Majesty says there will be no more secrets aboard Starship UK.”

Leonard didn’t take the mask.

“Again, I’m sorry about earlier,” she apologized. “And going off at you a little.”

“You realize you could have killed everyone aboard this ship, don’t you?” he finally said.

She nodded, knowing he was right. It had been a risk to take, but Lily had been certain of it. If she had failed, then all the deaths would be on her shoulders. She couldn’t have gone back to Ray that way. The last thing she wanted to be was a killer.

“But you could have killed a Star Whale,” she reminded him.

“You saved it though,” Leonard said, turning to her. “I know. But never try to make a choice for me again.”

“Again,” Lily cocked her head. “So you aren’t taking me back to Central City.”

“No,” he nodded. “Not until you want to.”

Relief flooded her. “Then I leave you in control of your own choices.”

He snorted a little and shook his head. Lily smiled and looked out the window. It really was a spectacular sight.

“The Star Whale’s amazing though, don’t you think?” she turned back to Leonard. “All that pain and misery and loneliness, and it just made it kind.”

Now he was looking over at her.

“Kind of reminds me of someone,” Lily added. “That’s how I knew I was making the right choice letting it be free.”

Leonard shrugged and placed a hand on her shoulder. “It does sound a bit familiar.”

Lily looked down at his hand before pulling him into a hug. She had to stand on her tiptoes because she was so small compared to him. Leonard seemed surprised at first, but returned it slowly. Despite that, it was a good hug.

“We should get going,” he told her once he let go of her.

“Okay,” Lily agreed. “Should we go say goodbye to Liz and Mandy and the others there? They might wonder where we went off to.”

“They’re remember us in their own ways,” Leonard replied as they started walking back to the market. “Besides, I’m not a fan of goodbyes.”

“Mm,” Lily hummed. “Still, think there’s any way I can learn more about Star Whales? I’d rather not be in one again, but I want to know more about them.”

“The TARDIS library probably has something on them.”

“Hold up, there’s a library?”

“Of course there is,” Leonard nodded. “There might be a swimming pool in there too. I haven’t checked recently.”

“When we get back there, I am so checking that out,” Lily sighed happily before catching a whiff of herself again. “Also, you said there was a wardrobe, right?”

“Yup.”

“Can I use that please?”

* * *

 

When they arrived back at the TARDIS, the phone was ringing. Lily was surprised that there was actually a working phone inside a time machine and started asking about time streams before Leonard asked her if she wanted to take the call. She jumped at the opportunity, although she looked confused upon answering it. When he asked her who it was, Lily said it was the British Prime Minister, specifically Winston Churchill. Apparently he needed assistance in a tricky situation.

“So I met the future queen of England, and now Churchill is calling you?!” she’d squeaked once the call had ended.

“Interested in meeting him too?” Leonard asked, leaning against the console.

“I-” Lily stopped mid-sentence. “Tomorrow…”

“Will still be there,” he said. “It’s a time machine, Lily. You’ll get there.”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “But did you ever run from something because you felt you needed a little more time or were scared?”

Leonard had a feeling she was talking about her ‘stuff’. “I have.”

“And what did you do?”

He gestured around him. “You’re looking at it.”

“Okay,” Lily nodded. “So wardrobe?”

“Out of the console room. Take your first left, second right, then the third left and straight on ahead. When you see the stairs, go under them and pass the bins. The wardrobe should be the fifth door to the left.”

“Gotcha,” she started to walk off.

“Lily, wait!”

She turned around.

“What was your mother’s name?”

“Clarissa,” Lily answered. “Clarissa Stein. Why?”

“It’s nothing,” he lied. “Don’t worry about it.”

She nodded and walked off. Leonard watched her go before turning back to the console. He plugged in the names of Martin and Clarissa Stein into the TARDIS’s databanks, narrowing the field of search to Earth in the twentieth century to twenty-first century. His fingers drummed against the console as he waited for the results to appear. He was suspicious that he had encountered Lily’s father before, but he wanted to make certain.

The scanning finished. On the screen was NO RESULTS FOUND.

His next search was Lily Stein in the same time period.

RESULTS FOUND.

Leonard opened the results and found her parents listed as such on her birth certificate. He shook his head. That didn’t make any sense. Lily wasn’t a Tenza or any similar alien race. She was perfectly normal and human, which left one conclusion to Leonard.

“She’s an time aberration,” he murmured aloud.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Daleks.


	3. Victory of the Daleks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily and Leonard go to Churchill's War Bunker, Leonard sasses some Daleks, and Lily makes friends.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was hoping to finish this last weekend, but things got really hectic for me and life got a bit nuts. So I'm sorry that this took so long. Hopefully it's worth the wait.
> 
> Also, on another slightly related note, I'm very pumped about the Thirteenth Doctor reveal. I can't wait to see 13 in action, even if I'm going to be sobbing over 12.

Lily had been searching for the library after getting out of the wardrobe. It felt excellent to be in regular clothes instead of her pajamas that had been covered in Star Whale sick. She was eager to learn more about the beautiful creature she had helped save, but the endless twisting of corridors in the TARDIS eluded her in her quest. Finally, Lily decided to go back to the console room and ask Leonard where the exact location of the library was. After all, he had known where the wardrobe was down to the last detail.

As she entered the console room, Leonard was staring intently at the screen on the central console. He didn’t seem to notice Lily until she was climbing the stairs. Once the bottoms of her shoes made a noise against the steps, he looked over sharply. There was a frown on his face, as though something was wrong with her. She glanced down at herself, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary.

“Are you okay?”

“Fine,” Leonard nodded as a soft boom echoed around them. “We’ve arrived.”

“Oh yeah, Churchill,” Lily remembered the phone call she’d picked up. She’d completely forgotten about it over trying to get around the TARDIS. “What do you think he wants?”

“Well, we’re in 1941 and the Blitz is currently going on,” Leonard said, walking past her to get to the doors. “My bet it’s got something to do with the war.”

“World War II,” she said, following after him. “He called you though. Have you met Churchill before?”

“Yes,” Leonard nodded. “I have. Although he might not recognize me.”

“Why not?” Lily frowned as she opened the door.

“I had a different face then.”

“Wait, what?” Lily whirled towards him. “Is that an alien thing?”

“Time Lord thing.”

“Okay then,” she nodded and stepped outside, eager to see 1941 after being years in the future.

Three guns were aimed at her by soldiers as soon as she stepped out. Lily heard the weapons cock and threw her hands in the air as Leonard came out after her.

* * *

 

Of course there were guns pointed at them. Leonard had been traveling long enough to know that where there were humans, nine out of ten times said there were guns around too. But given since they were here during the Blitz and in Churchill’s war bunker no less. These were tense times.

A familiar portly man pushed his way through the soldiers. Leonard smirked a little and turned to Lily. “Lily, meet Winston Churchill.”

Churchill took the cigar from his mouth. “Doctor, is that you?”

Leonard nodded and held out his hand to shake. “Hello, old friend.”

The prime minister stuck his hand out too before holding it palm up. Leonard shook his head and wagged a finger. “Ah ah ah.”

“What?” Lily looked between him. “What’s that about?”

“He wants the TARDIS key,” Leonard said.

“But just imagine what I could achieve with your remarkable machine, Doctor,” Churchill said. “Think of the lives that could be saved!”

“Works a bit different than that,” Leonard said.

Truth be told, he wouldn’t trust Winston Churchill with the TARDIS ever. It was alien and full of technology that could be used in the worst possible ways. As friendly as they were, Leonard knew that the power would get to Churchill’s head and make him even worse than the man who the Allies despised.

Besides, Leonard had been the one who stole it. He didn’t really want to give it up.

“Must I take it by force?”

Leonard closed the doors and shook his head. “Not how it works, Winston.”

“Sorry to interrupt,” Lily chimed in. “But I can put my hands down yet?”

“At ease, boys,” Churchill nodded and waved a hand at the soldiers. “Who’s this young woman, Doctor?”

“This is Lily Stein,” Leonard said, motioning to Lily as she put her hands down. “She’s travelling with me right now.”

“Dr. Lily Stein,” Lily corrected as she shook Churchill’s hand. “I studied hard for that.”

“Dr. Lily Stein,” he said before looking back at Churchill. “Now, you rang?”

“I did,” Churchill motioned for them to follow after him. “Come with me.”

He walked out of the room they were in. Leonard sauntered after him with Lily bringing up the rear. As they walked through the halls, dozens of personal were running about. A young woman approached Churchill to get his signature on a requisition form. Leonard noted noted the sad look on her face and figured she had a loved one in danger. Odds were by the end of the war, they would be dead, especially if it was a soldier.

“So where are we?” Lily asked, gazing around her as they strolled down the halls.

“The Cabinet War Rooms,” he said. “The top secret heart of the War Office beneath London during the second World War.”

“I see you’ve changed your face again,” Churchill remarked as they went around a corner.

“Observant as ever.”

“You know you’re late, Doctor. I called you a month ago.”

“My apologies. The TARDIS gets like that. For a Type 40, it does that from time to time.”

Lily looked over at Leonard. “So I’m not the only one you’ve been late for?”

He sighed. “Have I told you I’m sorry yet?”

“Nope!”

“Then I’m sorry,” he said as a man in a military uniform approached Churchill.

“Sir,” the newcomer said. “Another formation is coming in. It looks like Stukas.”

“Excellent,” Churchill nodded. “Then we shall go up to the top, Group Captain. Come along, Doctor. I have to show you something.”

Leonard saw Lily grin with excitement and winked at her. Churchill lead them to an elevator typical for the time period. Lily studied it as they rose upwards in it. For a while, all the occupants were silent. Then Churchill finally turned to him.

“Doctor, we are standing at a crossroads on our own,” he said. “Our backs are to the wall with the expectation of invasion daily. If any advantage to stop the Nazi menace arises, then I shall grasp at it with both hands.”

His words were puzzling and ominous. Leonard frowned as the elevator stopped. “What kind of advantage?”

“You’ll see,” the prime minister chuckled as he let them out of the elevator and out onto the roof.

All around them was wartime London. Lily’s jaw dropped as she stared out the scene. The sun was slowly setting, but they could still see everything. Out on the roof, it was sandbags and soldiers and Union Jacks. A man in a white lab coat was looking up at the sky through a pair of binoculars.

“Oh my gosh,” Lily murmured, staring out.

“Doctor, Dr. Stein, meet Professor Edwin Bracewell,” Churchill said, pointing to the man with the binoculars. “He heads out Ironsides Project.”

Bracewell turned away from the binoculars, revealing a friendly bespectacled face. “How do you do?”

“What’s the report, Professor?” Churchill asked.

Bracewell looked back to the sky. “Two-five Ju 88s incoming from the east.”

An explosion went off in the distance. Lily flinched.

“Ready, Bracewell?” Churchill shouted.

“Aye-aye, sir,” Bracewell gave a thumbs up. “On my order...fire!”

Beams of light shot out of the sandbag outposts. They hit the enemy fliers dead on, knocking all of them out of the sky. Bracewell gave them a proud smile. Leonard shook his head, horror creeping into him. Whatever had just taken out those planes was not of this Earth.

“Well,that was something,” Lily said. “I don’t remember learning about that in school.”

“That’s not human technology,” Leonard told her as he started towards Bracewell. “It’s something else. It sounds like-”

He stopped as a horrible thought hit him. But it couldn’t be possible. He’s stopped them when Davros had plucked planets from the sky and tried to obliterate them.

“What are those?” he demanding, continuing to walk over to Bracewell. “What did that?”

Bracewell turned to the opening between sandbags. “Advance!”

“Meet our new secret weapon, Doctor,” Churchill said proudly. “The one that will win us the war.”

A Dalek rolled out and swiveled its eyestalk towards Leonard. A icy feeling ran through the Time Lord before the burning hate and anger set in.

“What the hell are you doing here?”

“I am your soldier!” the Dalek said.

“Stop,” Leonard glared at the monster. “You know who I am.”

“Your identity is unknown.”

“Let me clarify things here,” Bracewell said naively, coming to stand beside the Dalek. “This is one of my Ironsides.”

Leonard closed his eyes and held back a disappointed sigh as Bracewell started feeding Allied propaganda lines to the Dalek, who gave him positive responses.

How the hell was the human race not dead by this point?

* * *

 

“They’re Daleks, Winston. They’re called Daleks.”

Lily leaned against the desk in Churchill’s office, staring down at set of blueprints. Leonard had demanded they all leave the roof as soon as the Ironsides had revealed themselves. She had seen fury on his face as they went back down the elevator. She was reminded of being back on Starship UK and seeing that same look when he found out what was happening to the Star Whale. However, he looked even angrier now.

“They are Ironsides, Doctor,” Churchill snapped, jabbing a finger onto the blueprints of one of them before pointing to other documents and file folders. “I have proof. Blueprints, statistics, results of field tests, even photographs. Bracewell invented them and they will win us the war.”

Lily took one of the folders, flipping through it. The field tests inside looked professional. Whether they were Daleks or Ironsides, they were passing with flying colors.

“They look official,” she shrugged.

Leonard shook his head. “They can’t be. They’re fakes. Bracewell couldn’t have invented them. It’s not possible.”

“He approached a brass hat a few months ago with the designs. He’s an utter genius.”

“He’s a tool of the Daleks!” Leonard hissed. “He did not invent them. They are aliens.”

“Aliens?” Churchill shook his head. “Preposterous!”

One of the Ironsides or Daleks rolled past the office. Lily watched it go by, suspicion tickling her a little. Leonard glared at it as it passed by them.

“I don’t care what they are,” Churchill continued. “They will win me the war.”

“Why won’t you listen to me?” Leonard rubbed his temples. “You were the one who called me about them!”

“I had my doubts at first when I rang a month ago,” Churchill confessed. “I thought the Ironsides were too good to be true.”

“They are,” Leonard slammed his hands on the table. “You need to destroy them before they turn on you. They are dangerous. Lily, tell him!”

Churchill turned to her. Lily stared between the two men. She didn’t know a thing about Daleks. If Leonard was right about them, then they were only the second aliens she’d met. She barely knew a thing about Star Whales, so what was she supposed to say about Daleks?

“Lily?”

“Don’t look at me,” she shrugged. “What do you want me to tell him?”

“The Daleks. You know about them.”

“Um, no. Am I supposed to know about them?”

“Yes,” Leonard stepped away from Churchill’s desk and toward her. “After all, they invaded your world a few times. You can’t forget the planets in the sky.”

Lily tilted her head, confusing. “I have no clue what you’re talking about.”

“Lily,” Leonard watched as another Dalek rolled past them. “You remember the Daleks, don’t you? That happened here on Earth recently for you.”

“No,” she shook her head. “Are you sure you have the right planet? Or even the right time period?”

“Yes and yes,” he nodded, frowning at her. “We’re talking about that later. Right now, we need to focus on what’s happening now. You need to question Bracewell.”

“Cool,” Lily crossed her arms. “What specifically about?”

“How he got the idea for his Ironsides.”

* * *

 

“Excuse me?” Lily stepped into the room she’d been told Bracewell worked in. “Professor Bracewell?”

The professor looked up from his desk as an Ironside/Dalek coasted towards him. “Oh hello!”

“Would you care for some tea?” the Ironside/Dalek asked in its mechanized voice.

“That would be very nice, thank you,” Bracewell told it before it rolled off. “Where’s your friend?”

“With the prime minister,” Lily answered, stepping in. “He’s convinced your Ironsides are evil aliens called Daleks.”

Bracewell chuckled. “I can assure you, they are of my own creation.”

“You must be proud of them,” she said, smiling and looking around the room.

“I’m only doing my part for the war.”

“That’s good,” Lily walked over to another desk filled with papers. “So how did you come up with the idea for them? I’m just asking as a fellow scientist.”

“How does the idea of an invention come to anyone?” Bracewell asked.

“Fair enough,” Lily nodded as she picked up one of the papers. “You seem to have a lot of ideas here.”

“They just seem to teem from my head,” he said as he joined her at the table. “For example, I’ve had musing on the potential of hypersonic flight, gravity bubbles that can sustain life outside the terrestrial atmosphere-”

“And are these your ideas or the Daleks?” Leonard’s voice asked as he entered the room before Lily could ask more about the gravity bubble.

“Ah, Doctor,” Bracewell greeted. “Apparently you’re worried about the Ironsides. Don’t be afraid. These robots are entirely under my control I can assure you of that.”

One of them rolled forward with a cup of tea on a tray.

“See,” Bracewell took the tea. “They are the perfect servant and the perfect warrior.”

“You’re wrong,” Leonard told him, crossing his arms. “Whatever they’ve promised to do for you, you’re an idiot to trust them. They aren’t Ironsides. They are Daleks and they are death.”

“Indeed, Doctor!” Churchill entered the room now. “Death to the Third Reich. Death to our enemies.”

“And death to everyone else while you’re at it,” the Time Lord snarled.

“Would you care for some tea?”

“Enough!” Leonard swiped his hand at the tray the Ironside/Dalek, knocking it to the floor. “Why are you here? What do you want?”

“We seek only to help you.”

“To do what?”

“To win the war.”

“Really” Leonard’s voice was quiet, but Lily could feel an anger brewing behind it. “The only war you’ve ever cared about is the one your species have waged against everyone in the rest of the universe who isn’t a Dalek.”

“I do not understand. I am your soldier.”

“Bull!” Leonard lifted a wrench leaning against a pole. “But if you’re a soldier, prove it and defend yourself.”

“Wait!” Bracewell cried out as Leonard brought the wrench against the upper half of the Dalek.

“Leonard, what are you doing?” Lily shouted. She’d thought the scariest she’d seen him was back on Starship UK. Now, he looked even more vengeful as he continued to beat at the Dalek/Ironside. “Stop it!”

“You do not require tea?” it asked weakly.

“Doctor, stop this!” Churchill ordered. “These are precious machines! We need them!”

“No, you don’t!” Leonard screamed. “Fight back, Dalek! You want to. I know you do.”

Lily swallowed and took a step back towards the wall.

Leonard stopped hitting the machine and let the wrench drop before holding his arms out. “Well? What are you waiting for? You hate me. You hate everything that isn’t like me. You want to kill me. Stop acting like a good little Ironside and just do it!”

Lily shook her head and hurried forward to pull Leonard away from it. “I’m not trying to make a decision for you, but you need to calm down.”

“Please desist from striking me. I am your soldier”

Leonard yanked his arm out of her grasp.

“No!” he shouted at the Ironside/Dalek. “You are my enemy, and I am yours! You are despicable, the worst thing in all of creation. I keep defeating you over and over again. I sent you back into the void. I saved all of reality from your destruction. I am the Doctor, and you are the Daleks!”

He kicked the robot back, it’s eyestalk going from side to side. Bracewell looked hurt. Churchill glared at Leonard. Lily just stared back and forth between everyone, unsure of what to say.

Then the eyestalk swiveled back slowly towards them.

* * *

 

“Correct.”

“Finally,” Leonard turned back to Lily and the others. “Told you so.”

“Review testimony,” another Dalek in the room said, rolling forward to the one he had just kicked back.

Leonard went still as his voice replayed from the Dalek. “I am the Doctor, and you are the Daleks!”

“Testimony?” Leonard didn’t understand why the Daleks had taken that. “What are you up to?”

“Transmitting testimony now.”

“Who are they transmitting to?” Lily asked him.

“Testimony accepted,” one Dalek said to the other before Leonard could answer.

“Everyone, back up,” Leonard ordered. The Daleks had revealed themselves now from the disguise of helping the Allies. No mercy would be given to any of them.

“Marines!” Churchill bellowed. “Get in here.”

A small trio of soldiers hustled into the room, guns at the ready. A Dalek fired at them, killing them instantly. Churchill gasped as his own men went down. Lily’s mouth was open as she stared at them. Leonard could see that she was now taking in the Daleks in a new light. She was finally seeing them for what they were, what they had always been.

“Stop this!” Bracewell began flapping and waving his arms about. “Stop! Why are you doing this? You are my Ironsides! My creations!”

“We are the Daleks,” they said, swiveling towards him.

“But-but,” Bracewell shook his head. “I made you. I created you.”

“No. We created you.”

A beam shot out to hit Bracewell’s hand, which struck Leonard as an odd place for the Dalek to fire. They always went for the kill shot. But sparks flew in the air as Bracewell’s hand was blown off. Now there were wires and metal casing visible where the limb had been. Bracewell was an android.

“What the hell?” Churchill sputtered.

Bracewell looked as stunned as the rest of the humans in the room. It was like he hadn’t known what he was. Leonard was willing to bet the Daleks had implemented memories from some other human in his programming.

“Victory!” the Daleks chanted as they started to glow before vanishing. “Victory! Victory!”

Everyone stared at the spot where they’d been before Lily let out a long breath of air. “So you were right about the Daleks-”

“Told you so,” Leonard said quietly.

“Yes, you were,” she muttered. “But what just happened?”

“I wanted to know why they were here,” Leonard said. “To know what they were planning for the Earth.”

“And do you know?” Churchill asked.

“Apparently, it was me. They wanted my testimony. But there’s more going on though and I need to know what.”

With that, Leonard walked quickly out of the room and back to the room he had landed the TARDIS in. Lily called out to him, and Leonard knew that she was following him. He made the twists and turns to get back, walking faster and dodging people as they got in his path. Leonard wanted to get away from here and to wherever the Daleks were before she caught up to him. The last place that Lily needed to be was a Dalek ship. They could kill her, and he’d prefer to find out the mystery of what created her status as an aberration without her being dead.

“Hey!” he heard her shout when he was at the doors to the TARDIS. “What is happened?”

“That Dalek said my testimony was accepted before it escaped.”

“So?” she shrugged. “It confirmed you were right about the Ironsides being Daleks.”

“But why?” Leonard asked as he unlocked the door to the TARDIS. “I told you, there’s more going on. I need to find it out.”

Lily hurried down the small steps by the doorway. “Are we going to chase after them? Is it going to be like some galactic police chase?”

“No,” Leonard shook his head as he stood in the doorway of the TARDIS. “There’s no ‘we’ here. I’m going after them because this is dangerous. You stay here with Winston. It’s safer.”

Lily scoffed. “It’s safer to stay in the London Blitz?”

“For a human, that’s as safe as you can get right now,” he told her before stepping inside as Churchill entered the room. “KBO, Winston.”

He closed the doors and headed towards the console to get a lock on the Daleks’ location.

“Where are you?” he muttered, as he flipped the switches to get the TARDIS outside the reaches of Earth before scanning for Dalek ships.

Sure enough, there was one right by the moon.

* * *

 

Lily watched as the TARDIS dematerialized. She crossed her arms and looked down at her feet. Leonard was about to go run off after a bunch of aliens on his own while she was stuck down here. She could have just stayed in the TARDIS and watched the situation from the screen on the console inside. Instead, she was underground.

“What are we supposed to do in the meantime?” she asked Churchill.

“What the Doctor said,” he told her. “KBO.”

“And that stands for…”

“Keep buggering on.”

Great.

“Prime Minister?” the woman from earlier with the requisition forms came into the room. “RDF has picked up a signal. It’s an unidentified object, sir. The man on duty reports it’s hanging in the sky, but we haven’t been able to get a proper fix on it. It’s too far up.”

Winston took the papers from the woman and examined them before turning to her. “Thoughts, Dr. Stein?”

“A ship where the Daleks are, perhaps?” she suggested with a confident smile.

“Exactly!” Churchill nodded. “No doubt the Doctor’s gone after them. Now we know where he is.”

“He’ll be in the middle of everything,” Lily nodded before realizing what that meant. “And he’ll be in it alone.”

* * *

 

As soon as the TARDIS landed, Leonard walked out of it and right into a chamber with three Daleks. “Hell of a time to take a break from the war, don’t you think?”

“It is the Doctor!”

“Great, your brains haven’t completely rusted away,” he remarked.

“Exterminate.”

“Hold on,” Leonard fished in his pocket and held up the first thing he could find- a joy buzzer. “What I’m holding is the TARDIS’s self destruct button. One press and everything gets blown to float around in space.”

Truth be told he’d only get a little shock. The Daleks didn’t need to know that though.

“You would not use such a device,” one of the Daleks said.

“Maybe I would, maybe I wouldn’t,” he shrugged. “I regenerated recently. New man, new body. Maybe I’ve changed since we last crossed paths. I could blow you apart and not dwell on it ever.”

Another Dalek started to move forward, as if to scan the buzzer. Leonard held up a finger.

“Scan it and we go boom.”

The Dalek moved back. Leonard gave a smug smirk and began to examine the room. It hadn’t been very well maintained. The control panels were beaten up. Aside from an outward facing room that looked pristine, everything else was worn down. The Daleks didn’t look to be in the best condition either.

“Last time I saw you,” he murmured, remembering the stolen planets and Davros’s wicked plot. “All of you were finished.”

“One ship survived.”

“Of course it did,” Leonard shook his head. “Then you fell back through time, helpless to stop yourselves.”

“We picked up a trace,” a Dalek who’d tried to scan the buzzer announcer. “A Progenitor device was located.”

Leonard frowned. He didn’t know what that was, but he could figure it out. Daleks did love to talk about their evil plans. “And that’s going to help you?”

“It is our past and our future,” the Dalek replied.

“Deep, but tell me what it means.”

The Dalek spun towards the newer looking room. “It contains pure Dalek DNA. Thousands were created. All but one were lost!”

“So what made you build Bracewell?” Leonard asked. “You have the Progenitor. What’s the use of an android and getting a testimony out of me?”

“It was...necessary.”

Reluctance was such a rare trait in a Dalek. Leonard savored it for a moment before thinking as to why Bracewell was needed. When it came to him, he smirked at the Daleks.

“Oh,I see,” he nodded. “The Progenitor wouldn’t recognize you because you’re impure. You were the Daleks created from Davros. You aren’t pure Daleks.”

“A solution was devised-”

“Yeah, my testimony,” Leonard interrupted. “I get it. You get me to confirm that you’re Daleks. The Progenitor recognizes me as the greatest enemy of the Daleks, blah blah blah, and then recognizes you so you can create more of your kind.”

A Dalek moved over to the beat up control panel, covering up one of the balls with its plunger end.

“Withdraw, Doctor!” the other Daleks ordered. “Or the city dies in flames.”

“So you’re destroying the Earth a city at a time? Nice to see you’ve learned to take things step by step rather than doing it all at once.”

“Withdraw!”

“Cute,” Leonard sneered. “Your ship is a wreck. It’s not going to destroy London or anywhere else.”

“We will not destroy the city! The humans will do that themselves.”

Leonard pressed his lips together. With World War II going on, that was a task that could be completed.

* * *

 

As Lily followed after Churchill back into the main war room, a scene of panic was playing out. Telephones were ringing and people were running about. Snatches of conversation about all the lights being on in London reached her ears. If that was true, then the city would be an easy target. Thousands would die in the Blitz now.

“The Daleks are behind this,” she muttered as they approached the center table. “They have to be.”

“I concur, Dr. Stein,” Churchill agreed. “Every inch of the city is visible to the Germans. We’ve become sitting ducks.”

“Not unless we find a way to turn off the lights,” Lily said.

“You heard it as I did, the generators won’t shut off.”

“Sir,” a woman pulled her headset down. “There’s a sighting of German bombers over the channel. They’re heading for us. ETA ten minutes.”

Lily groaned. The twenty minutes she and Leonard had gotten to expose Prisoner Zero felt like a luxury now.

“Here they come,” Churchill shook his head. “Get a message to the members of the War Cabinet to meet at six hundred hours...if we’re still here.”

“Are you just going to give up on fighting back?” Lily asked. “The Daleks struck us, we need to fight back and stop this.”

“They’re aliens. I’ve seen their weapons in action, and ours are no match for theirs.”

“No,” Lily shook her head. “There has to be something here. We can’t be completely-oh!”

She remembered Bracewell telling her about all his ideas earlier. The gravity bubbles and the hypersonic flight. Maybe some of it could be applicable.

“Dr. Stein?”

Lily turned back to Churchill. “We’re not helpless. We’ve got something the Daleks overlooked.”

“Which was?”

“They left us Bracewell.”

Lily took off running towards the lab with the prime minster right behind her. When she arrived, she saw Bracewell, his arm in a sling, holding a gun. Something about his expression told Lily that the kindly scientist wasn’t planning to shoot them.

“Put the gun down, Bracewell,” Churchill ordered as he caught up to Lily. “That’s an order.”

“I’m not planning to shoot you,” Bracewell said mournfully, gazing at the barrel. “My life, what I thought was my life, is a lie. I’m making a choice to end it once and for all.”

He started to raise the gun. Lily hurried forward and snatched it out of his hands. “This isn’t the way, Bracewell. Besides, if you have a problem with the Daleks who made you, we’re already planning to take them out. We can use your help to do so.”

“But those creatures, they made or built me,” Bracewell sounded hopeless. “I remember things like any other human being. I remember the last war, the mud and the gas and the squalor. Everything about it was miserable, and I remember it all. But it never happened. What am I?”

“I’ll tell you what you are,” Churchill pointed at Bracewell with his cigar. “You are either on our side or their side, and I’m not talking about the Axis. I don’t give a damn if you are a machine, Bracewell. What I want to know is are you a man?”

Lily pressed her lips together to stop from saying something unhelpful to the situation regarding Churchill’s question. Instead, she set the gun down and took a seat across from Bracewell.

“I get that you’re hurt and upset,” she told him. “Everyone’s had someone lie to them about something, and it’s the worst. But right now, the Daleks have all the lights in London on from their spacecraft. They’ve made it an easy target for the Germans. My friend, Leonard...the Doctor, he’s on the Dalek’s ship right now to stop them. But we need to work from the ground too or thousands of people will die tonight. You’re the person who can help us stop it.”

“But how?” Bracewell asked.

“You’re alien technology,” she grinned, reaching over to his desk to pick up the ideas he’d drafted out. “You’re just as clever as the Daleks, and you’ve shown us yourself.”

He took the papers from her with a frown. “The hypersonic flight and the gravity bubbles?”

Lily nodded. “You can send up something to strike the ship with them.”

“It’s theoretical, but...yes, it could be done,” Bracewell turned to Churchill. “Prime Minister?”

“This war is big,” Churchill said. “So we need to think big ourselves. How quickly can you apply this to the planes?”

“It’s already been applied,” Bracewell responded. “But it’s untested.”

“You’ve got a shot to test it now,” Lily told him.

* * *

 

“No,” Leonard stared out the window of the Dalek ship before turning back to the Daleks. “Shut those lights out now or I will blow up the TARDIS.”

“Stalemate. Leave us and return to Earth.”

“And what? You win and leave?”

“Extinction is not an option,” a Dalek told him. “The Daleks must return and begin again.”

“No,” Leonard shook his head. “That’s not going to happen. You aren’t getting away again.”

A rushing noise began to circulate the air briefly before becoming a low, spaced out beeping. The Progenitor was lighting up like a demented Christmas tree.

“We have succeeded!” a Dalek blared, sending a chill down Leonard’s spine. “DNA reconstruction is complete.”

Time had run out to stop the Progenitor. Red light was wrapping up and down the arches supporting the room. Inside, some of the worst beings in all creation were being built up from Dalek DNA. Leonard stared as the doors to it opened, letting out a cloud of smoke.

“Observe, Doctor!” the Daleks announced as the newer Daleks came rolling out. “A new Dalek paradigm.

There were five that emerged. All of their casings were different bright shades. Instead of the brassy outer coloring, these monsters were red or orange or white or some other color of the human rainbow. He wrinkled his nose at them.

“We have succeeded!” one of the older Daleks cheered. “Behold, Doctor! The restoration of the Daleks. The master race has resurrected!”

Leonard shook his head. There was a madman on the Earth below who believed he had achieved that. Now, an alien race that had long heralded themselves as a master race had revived. Both the madman and the Daleks were wrong about themselves.

“All hail the new Daleks!” one of the older models proclaimed.

A new model, a large white Dalek, turned its eyestalk to the Dalek who had spoken. “Yes. You are inferior.”

“Correct.”

“Then prepare,” the white Dalek rumbled in a deep voice.

“We are ready,” the two old Daleks sung out together.

Another new Dalek model, this one blue, rolled so it faced the older models. It turned to the white Dalek.

“Cleanse the unclean,” the white Dalek said. “Total obliteration! Disintegrate!”

The blue Dalek fired one of the older models. Leonard’s eyes widened as it disintegrated in a burst of blue light. The other older models soon received the same fate.

“Well,” Leonard said as the white Dalek turned back to him. “Just us now. You’ve got new colors and deeper voices. Have you gone through Dalek puberty? Or do you still need to get through it.”

The white one began to advance on him. “You are the Doctor!”

“And you are a Dalek,” Leonard held up the buzzer. “And if you roll another inch forward, the TARDIS goes boom.”

The Dalek stopped advancing, stopping right in front of him.

“Do you know who we are, Doctor?”

“A pepperpot armed with a whisk and a plunger?” Leonard replied sarcastically.

“We are the paradigm of a new Dalek race,” the white Dalek bellowed. “Scientist, Strategist, Drone, Eternal, and the Supreme!”

“I’m guessing that last one is you,” Leonard pointed to the white Dalek. “You just came out of the oven and seem pretty confident. Maybe I’d feel that way too, but I’m not a Dalek. What’s the deal with the Supreme though?”

“It is the highest title!”

“Here I thought it was Doctor,” Leonard smirked. “That’s not important, because I have a question. What are you going to do now? From my point of view, you have two choices. Either shut off your machine lighting up London, or get blown into another kind of eternity by destruction of a TARDIS.”

“You would be destroyed too!” the Supreme countered.

“Occupational hazard!” he fired back.

The blue Dalek rolled up beside the Supreme. “Scan has revealed nothing. TARDIS self-destruct device is non-existent.”

Well, there went that ruse.

Leonard slipped the joy buzzer back into his pocket as some kind of alarm began to whir. The yellow Dalek rolled over to a control panel.

“Alert, alert!” it shrieked. “Unidentified projectiles approaching!”

The Daleks all turned to their compatriot. Leonard took the opportunity to slip over to panel behind him to get a look. Three red blips were approaching the Dalek ship. A frown settled on his face as studied the screen. Something was going on.

“What have the humans done?!” the Supreme shouted.

“Beats me,” Leonard shrugged.

“Explain! Explain! Explain!”

“Danny Boy to the Doctor, Danny Boy to the Doctor!” a new voice, one with an English accent, filled the chamber. “Are you receiving me, over?”

Leonard started to grin. “Winston, you beautiful man.”

“Danny Boy to the Doctor, come in, over.”

“Loud and clear, Danny Boy,” Leonard said, turning back to the Daleks. “You’re looking for a big dish on the side of the ship. Blow it up and it’s dark in London again, over!”

“Exterminate the Doctor!”

A beam shot from the Supreme at him. Leonard dodged it in just enough time.

“That’s my cue to leave,” Leonard shouted as he ran for the TARDIS. “I’d say it’s been a pleasure, but with you, it never is!”

* * *

 

Back on Earth, Lily Stein was gathered with the staff of the war bunker and Winston Churchill, listening to the pilots’ transmissions of the attack on the Dalek ship. She could feel the hope starting to rise around her in the room as the trio went in towards the signal. There was a wave of concern that went through everyone when one fighter went down. When the second one went down, Lily tightened her fists to stop herself from biting her nails. They had to stop that beam from keeping the lights on, otherwise history would be ruined.

“Danny Boy to the Doctor,” the remaining pilot said. “Only me left now. Anything you can do, over?”

There was a pause before Leonard’s voice came in. “Doctor to Danny Boy. Good news is I can cause a disruption to the Dalek shields. Bad news is that it won’t last long. You have to make your shots count, over.”

Lily drummed the table nervously as the pilot replied to Leonard and they agreed to pursue Leonard’s idea.

“I’m going in,” Danny Boy reported. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck,” Lily murmured quietly.

Everyone waited anxiously until a triumphant smile spread across the group captain’s face. “We have a direct hit, sir!”

The war room exploded into cheers. Lily joined in with them, a smile of her own across her face.

“Sir, the lights have gone out again,” someone reported to Churchill. “We’re in the dark again.”

Even more cheers started up.

* * *

 

“Danny Boy to the Doctor, going in for another attack.”

Leonard grabbed the transmitter, watching the feed of the Dalek ship play on the screen. He’d relocated the TARDIS to hover on the opposite side of the moon as the Daleks. The opportunity to destroy the Daleks for good was right in front of him. He was going to do what he failed to do in the Time War, and destroy them for good.

“Doctor to Danny Boy,” Leonard said. “Destroy that ship. Leave no survivors. Over.”

“What about you, Doctor?”

“Don’t worry about me,” he replied. “I’m fine.”

“Doctor!”

Another one of the screens on the walls of the TARDIS came to life with the image of the Supreme. Leonard’s lip curled as he glared at it.

“Call off your attack,” the Supreme ordered.

“Call off the attack?” he pretended to consider it. “Pass. You’re not running off again to lick your wounds in the future. It’s the end for you, Daleks. You can’t escape it.”

“The Earth will be destroyed if you do not call off your attack!”

That was puzzling and it had his attention. “You’ve got nothing left after that dish. You think I’m some kind of moron?”

“Bracewell is a bomb.”

Leonard shook his head. “And I should believe a Dalek? You don’t have sincerity. Deception is built into your DNA.”

“His power is derived from an oblivion continuum. Call off your attack or we will obliterate the android.

Leonard looked back to the console. An oblivion continuum was bad news. The Earth would be decimated by it and the course of history in the universe would be sent into a tailspin. Going to stop it would save the planet, but he’d have to let the Daleks escape doing so. Of course when he had the chance to finally wipe the most evil species from existence, they went and pulled this on him.

“I could rid the universe of you once and for all,” he hissed.

“Then do it,” the Supreme challenged. “But we will shatter the Earth, and the humans will die screaming.”

“And if I go save the Earth, you run off to get stronger.”

“You have a choice to make, Doctor. Destroy the Daleks or save the earth!”

Leonard closed his eyes. Why did this have to be the choice?  
“Begin countdown of continuum,” the Supreme ordered. “Choose, Doctor, choose!”

Down on Earth were millions and millions of people. A young woman who did not belong in this time was among them. She was an aberration in some way, so whatever effect had created her would become null. But there was something about Lily Stein that bothered him. How did she exist when her parents were nowhere to be found, as if they themselves had never existed? But he had to keep Lily alive because she was his friend, not just because he needed to figure her out.

With a sigh, he made his choice.

“Doctor to Danny Boy. Withdraw, over.”

“Say again, sir, over.”

“Doctor to Danny Boy,” Leonard began to pilot the TARDIS back to Earth. “Withdraw and return to Earth. Over and out.”

“Understood, over.”

Leonard heard the soft boom of the TARDIS landing and ran out the doors. He was back where he’d first landed the TARDIS in the bunker. As he made his way through the halls, he followed the sounds of voices right to the war room. Bracewell was chatting away with Churchill and Lily. Neither of them knew that they were talking to a ticking time bomb. Leonard wasted no time in racing forward and laying a swift punch on Bracewell that knocked the android to the floor.

“What is your problem with him?” Lily asked, staring at him.

“Apologies, Bracewell,” Leonard hissed as his hand started to throb. Damn androids. “And I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you are a bomb.”

“He’s a what?” Churchill gasped.

“I don’t understand,” Bracewell moaned, sitting upright.

Leonard bent down beside him. “You’ve got an oblivion continuum inside you that the Daleks have started a countdown on.”

“An oblivion continuum?” Lily looked at him.

“A small cache of wormhole,” Leonard explained. “It provides perpetual power, which is how you’ve been able to walk, talk, and think of incredible things. Sadly for us, the Daleks have set it to go off. When it does, the Earth will bleed through into another dimension.”

“Which would not be good,” Lily knelt down on the other side of Bracewell. “So what do we do?”

“We figure out how to stop it.”

Leonard ripped Bracewell’s shirt open, exposing his chest. Pulling the sonic screwdriver out, he aimed it at Bracewell’s bare chest. The skin began to part, revealing a metal body beneath. A circle divided into five parts rested at the center of it. One fifth of it began to glow yellow.

“Have you ever stopped one of these before?” Lily asked.

Leonard shook his head. “First time for everything. But we’ve got time to stop this. The Earth isn’t dead until all five of those parts go red.”

“Is there a way in or a wire to cut?”

“This isn’t like the movies, Lillian.”

“How is this possible?” Churchill stared down at the man. “He told us of his memories. He remembers the Great War.”

“They had to belong to someone else and just got implanted into him,” Leonard said, as an idea came to him. It would involve talking about personal feelings and life stories, but the world was at stake. “Edwin, tell me about your life.”

“I really don’t think this is the time-”

“Yes, it is,” he countered. “Prove to me that you are human, that you can feel. Tell us everything.”

Bracewell sighed. “My parents, they ran the post office in our town. It was a little place. Everyone always came into it, so they knew my family well. It was near the abbey, by some beech trees. There used to be eight trees, but then a storm took them out-”

“Tell me about your parents,” Leonard interrupted. He needed to bring out as much emotion as he could in Bracewell, and beech trees were not going to stop this bomb.

“They were good and kind. They died though. Scarlet fever. It took a sister too.”

“Focus on that,” he ordered Bracewell as the first fifth turned red and a second began to go yellow. “How did it make you feel?”

Bracewell looked hurt, almost close to tears. “It hurt.”

“Keep going.”

“It hurt,” Bracewell whimpered. “It hurt so much. It was like a wound, or even worse. I felt like I had been emptied out.

Two fifths were now red.

“Keep remembering,” Leonard told the android. “Remember the post office. Remember your parents. Remember the stupid beech trees. Remember the Great War and the trenches and the soldiers and the deaths. Feel all of that. Daleks don’t feel, but you can. You are not like them in any way. You can feel, and so can humans. Prove to us now that you are human.”

“But it hurts, Doctor.”

Leonard wasn’t sure if it was the continuum or the humanity. He hoped it was the latter, but now three fifths were red.

“Embrace that pain. It means you are alive. The Daleks won’t be able to detonate the continuum because you are a human being. Your name is Professor Edwin Bracewell and you are human.”

The fourth fifth turned red, and the final piece started to turn yellow.

* * *

 

Lily watched as the fourth piece went red. Leonard’s strategy of making Bracewell feel pain didn’t seem to be working well. Maybe another emotion could do the trick though. She didn’t have a lot of choices with that last piece getting close to orange, so she settled on one she’d been dwelling on lately.

“Professor,” she said. “Have you ever been in love?”

Bracewell turned his head from Leonard to look at her. “What?”

“Love,” she repeated. “Have you felt something for someone, that no matter how far away you went, you would still want to go back to them?”

A confused expression crossed the android’s face. “Huh?”

“Being away from them...it hurts, right?” Lily smiled. “Ever felt something like that?”

The fifth section started to fade into yellow.

“And even if it does hurt, it hurts in a good way.”

Bracewell nodded. “I probably shouldn’t talk about her.”

“So there’s a her?”

Another nod, followed by a dreamy smile and the yellowing section turning back to white.

“Want to share her name with the class?” Leonard asked.

“Dorabella,” Bracewell murmured.

“That’s a beautiful name,” Lily told him as she thought about Ray. “What was she like?”

“Her smile was the most perfect thing my eyes had ever seen,” Bracewell said as the fourth piece went white. “Her eyes were so blue they were nearly violet. But there was a small ring of green around the pupil. They made me think of flowers every time I looked into them.”

“And what else?” Lily asked, watching the third piece fade back to white.

“Her laugh was incredible. It made me laugh too. And she cared for people. She had so much kindness in her. If someone was in need, she was there. Dorabella…”

The remaining two fifths faded quickly into white. A small smile appeared on Leonard’s face. Lily allowed herself a proud smile of her own.

Suck it, Daleks.

Leonard smirked down at Bracewell. “Welcome to the human race, Edwin.”

Lily watched as Leonard rose to his feet and pointed to Churchill. “You’re brilliant, Winston.”

Churchill looked somewhat confused by it, but Leonard now pointed at Bracewell. “Edwin, you’re brilliant too. And Lillian, you’re a genius.”

“That’s nothing new,” she teased.

“Ha,” he replied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, there’s Daleks to stop.”

He wasn’t even halfway across the room before Bracewell sat up. “Doctor, wait. It’s too late.”

Leonard stopped and turned around slowly.

“They’ve gone,” Bracewell added, adjusting his askew glasses. “The Daleks are in the wind now.”

Leonard closed his eyes. A look of utter disappointment washed over his features. There was anger in it too. Lily could see he was starting to head into some sort of brooding state. She stood up and walked over to him. She didn’t touch him, as she was unsure how he’d react, but she held her ground in front of him.

“I failed,” he murmured.

“But you stopped the oblivion continuum,” Lily reminded him.

“I let the Daleks go,” Leonard opened his eyes, and Lily saw there was pain in them. “They won this time.”

“But you saved the planet. You stopped London from getting blown off the map. That’s not a bad outcome.”

Churchill nodded in agreement. Leonard sighed and shrugged.

“It could have been worse,” he admitted.

“Much worse,” Lily agreed.

* * *

 They stayed at the bunker with Churchill for a few more hours. Lily was able to see a few more areas of the bunker in the meantime while Leonard disappeared to remove any other alien technology around the base. She made it out to the roof once more to see the soldiers raising the Union Jack as dawn broke. When she looked out at London from the rooftop, Lily couldn’t help but think about the war. History wasn’t her forte, but she knew there was a lot more to come for both the city and the world. Despite it all, those who survived would pull through.

“So what comes now?” Lily asked Churchill when she found him again in the war room.

Churchill chuckled. “There’s still a war to run, Dr. Stein. I’ll be plenty busy with that.”

Across the room, a young woman suddenly broke down sobbing. Lily remembered someone had addressed her as Breen.

“Is she okay?”

“Hm?” Churchill noticed the crying woman. “Oh, Miss Breen. Her young man didn’t make it. Shot down over the Channel.”

Lily swallowed. A terrible thought crossed her mind of something awful happening to Ray. Quickly, she shook it away. She didn’t even want to begin to think about that.

“I can’t imagine what she’s going through,” Lily murmured as another woman began to comfort Breen. “Where’s Leonard?”

“Right here,” the man himself said as he entered the room. “There’s no more alien tech around here now.”

“But won’t you reconsider letting us keep it on one Spitfire?” Churchill asked, a pleading note in his voice. “They’d win us the war in twenty four hours.”

Leonard shook his head. “No can do.”

“It could put an end all this misery!”

“As much as I’d like to help, you have to do this the hard way, Winston,” Leonard told him. “It’ll be tough. Bad days are coming, but you can do it.”

“You can stay with us,” the prime minister suggested. “Help us win the war. The world needs someone like you to look up to.”

Lily watched Leonard shake his head again. “They don’t need me. The world already has Winston Churchill.”

Churchill chuckled. “As always, it’s been a pleasure, Doctor.”

He held out his arms. Leonard looked hesitant to go in for the hug. Lily gave him a small nudge forward. In return, her alien friend gave her a look before getting a hug from the great Winston Churchill.

“Goodbye, Doctor,” Churchill told the man as he stepped back.

“Not goodbye, Winston,” Leonard countered. “I’m sure we’ll meet again.”

“I’d like to hope so,” he chuckled before turning to Lily. “And Dr. Stein, goodbye. It was a pleasure meeting you.”

“You too,” Lily told him, letting herself grin widely as she shook Winston Churchill’s hand. She was shaking a little, still amazed that she had been able to meet him.

Churchill started to turn to leave, but Leonard held out his hand. “Hold it.”

“Doctor?”

“You’ve got something of mine,” Leonard beckoned with his hand. “I need that TARDIS key.”

Instead of being angry, Churchill chuckled and handed over the key. “You get me every time.”

“And I believe this is yours,” Leonard replied, handing over a watch.

Churchill shook his head and gave a salute. “KBO.”

With that, he left the room.

“You lifted Churchill’s watch?” Lily asked once he had gone.

“Need I remind you you’re traveling with a thief?” Leonard smirked as they left to say their goodbyes to Bracewell. “I knew he would go for the key. That’s why I took the watch.”

“Can you teach me to do that?”

“Maybe,” he shrugged as they entered Bracewell’s lab, where the android was staring at his workbench.

“I’ve been expecting you, Doctor,” he said, turning around to face them. “I knew it couldn’t last, that this moment had to come.”

“Moment?” Lily frowned.

Bracewell nodded. “You’ve come to deactivate me. I understand completely. I’m Dalek technology. I don’t belong here.”

Leonard nodded. “You’re absolutely right.”

Lily stared at him. After all that time spent convincing him he was human, Leonard was going to shut Bracewell down. Android or not, he was someone and he had shown he could feel. She couldn’t believe what was happening.

Leonard gave a quick wink at her. “Lily, we’re going to be back in, what, twelve minutes?”

“I’d say fifteen,” she said, catching on to what he was thinking and feeling relief.

“Exactly,” Leonard turned back to Bracewell. “Then you’ll be deactivated.”

Bracewell didn’t seem to get it. “So I have fifteen minutes.”

“I’d stretch it to twenty,” Lily added. “We’ve got that...thing, right? The urgent one?”

“Yes, we do,” he said slowly. “Okay?”

“Very well. I will wait here then.”

He still didn’t seem to understand. Lily smiled a little.

“Actually, I’m thinking the thing could go half an hour,” she told the android. “It’s definitely going to take a while. You shouldn’t go _anywhere_.”

“Nowhere,” Leonard was smirking now. “Don’t go trying to find a post office by some beech trees. And definitely don’t go after any girl you’ve loved.”

“No way,” Lily added, shaking her head.

“But there’s a lot that can get done in half an hour.”

Finally, Bracewell seemed to get it. A smile spread across his face and he began to laugh. “Thank you, Doctor.”

“You can thank me by going,” Leonard told him before turning around to walk out. “Come along, Stein.”

Lily followed after him before stopping at the door. Looking back one last time, she watched as Bracewell pulled out a travel case. He looked utterly delighted.

“Professor?”

Bracewell turned around.

“I hope you find Dorabella,” Lily told him.

“As do I, Dr. Stein.”

* * *

 

“So, you have enemies?”

Leonard turned around as Lily ran into the room where the TARDIS was. “You sound surprised.”

“Well, I get that everyone has enemies and rivals,” Lily shrugged. “But usually they’re not trying to kill you or destroy the world. Yours are arch-enemies or something.”

“You have no idea,” Leonard replied, leaning against the TARDIS. Lily had no clue what kinds of creatures despised his existence.

“I never thought of you having enemies,” Lily crossed her arms. “Maybe it was because I met you when I was a kid, but I never saw you having any.”

“And now you know I do.”

“They’re dangerous,” she added. “Really dangerous. Actually, it’s the stuff of nightmares.”

“So am I,” he told her. “That’s not a problem, is it?”

“You run risk with everything you do,” Lily shrugged. “Besides, I’m still here.”

“ _For now,_ ” his mind thought, reminding him of all the people he’d lost because they were around him. Lily couldn’t join them. There were already too many faces he’d failed already.

“Are you worried about the Daleks?”

Leonard snorted. “All the time. But there’s something else to worry about.”

“Which is?”

“Something forgotten,” Leonard turned to unlock the TARDIS. “Or should I say something you’ve forgotten.”

Lily scrunched up her face in confusion. “Me?”

“You didn’t know the Daleks,” Leonard told her as he pushed open the door. “You didn’t recognize them.”

“If this is about earlier, are you sure that it happened on Earth during a time I was alive?”

“I know it did,” he affirmed as she stepped inside.

“No one on Earth has ever of them,” Lily replied. “I’m positive.”

Leonard watched her walk towards the console, but didn’t make a move to follow after her. He’d have to check Earth’s timeline, but he was all too certain Lily had witnessed at least one Dalek attack. It could be her status as an aberration that was causing this. She seemed perfectly normal, but then again a lot of deadly things were like that before they attacked you.

“What are you, Lillian Stein?” he asked quietly as he stepped into the TARDIS and shut the door.

* * *

 As the TARDIS dematerialized, light shined out of the crack in the wall of the room it had been in.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: "Hello, Sweetie."
> 
> Also, Angels.
> 
> Reviews=Love


	4. Time of the Angels

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Leonard and Lily rescue Sara Lance from a starliner and wind up in her investigation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was so happy to finally get to this chapter because that meant it was time for Sara! 
> 
> Hopefully, I can get one more chapter up of this before RL gets hectic again. But I'm hoping that I could possibly get this done by the end of 2017. No promises though.

_ “Hey, what are you doing, I’m supposed to be- why am I handcuffed?” _

_ “Spoilers,” the blonde smirked. _

_ “Sara, if you do this, then you die. Let me take your place.” _

_ “No, I can’t let you do that! If I do, then you’ll never know me. Our history will be erased.” _

_ The Doctor stopped struggling, staring at the woman who knew so much about him. _

_ Sara gave a bitter laugh. “And I’ve realized, you’ve always known how I’m going to die. My whole history, you knew what was going to happen to me in the end. That explains why you, the future you, cried at the towers the last time we met. You knew it was the end.” _

_ “Sara,” the Doctor shook his head, trying to reach for the screwdriver sitting out of his grasp. _

_ “Don’t even try,” she told him, shaking her head. “If you die here, we never meet.” _

_ “Time can be rewritten.” _

_ “Those times can’t!” she said sharply. “And don’t you ever try to.” _

_ The Doctor looked like the world had come down on him. _

_ “Don’t be sad,” Sara smiled, but there were tears in her eyes. “It’s not the end for you. It’s the beginning. You’re going to see me again.” _

_ “Sara, please.” _

_ “It’s your future. You and me, time and space. Just you wait. It’s going to be one hell of a ride.” _

_ “Sara, you know my real name,” the Doctor said. “You know every name I’ve ever gone by. Why would I do that? Is it because-” _

_ “Shhhh,” Sara placed a harness on her head. “Spoilers, sweetie.” _

* * *

“You know what’s interesting about museums?”

“They’re a window to the past?” Lily guessed as Leonard leaned over another case.

“That,” Leonard nodded. “But also that species get worse and worse about dating where the artifacts originate from the longer they stick around.”

“It’s a lot of time,” Lily wrinkled her nose. “History classes must be awful in the future.”

“Depends on the species,” Leonard said. “Also there’s been pretty things to take from museums sometimes.”

Lily raised her eyebrows. “You’ve robbed museums before?”

“Early days,” he replied, pushing off the case and walking down the line of exhibits. “I expected better of the Delirium Archive. This is the final resting place of the Headless Monks and the biggest museum ever.”  
Lily decided she would look up Headless Monks later. It seemed doubtful they were human, given humans couldn’t survive their heads taken off. However, there could be some alien technology that allowed humans in the future to survive sans head. How would you be able to walk then not knowing where you were going?

‘ _ Look it up later’ _ she thought to herself. “So how is the final resting place on an asteroid? Is it a thing in this era for people to live on asteroids now?”

“Higher class people tend to do it. Apparently it’s trendy.”

“And not that this isn’t interesting or anything,” Lily continued. “But what are we doing in a museum when you have a time machine and can see all this when it was being used?”

“I like to see how much people can find and if they get it right,” Leonard replied. “Besides, it’s a more of a thrill to break into a museum...”

He trailed off and approached a glass box that held a rusted box inside it. Lily followed him and leaned in to get a good look at it. She didn’t know what exactly it was, but the top was what sparked her interest. It was covered in a series of symbols that must have been another language.

“Is this one wrong too?”

“It’s a home box from an old starliner,” he murmured. “The Byzantium, to be specific.”

“And for those of us from the twenty-first century who have no idea what a home box is?”

“Think of a black box for an Earth airplane,” Leonard said, tapping the glass. “But if something happens to the ship, this box flies back to the departure point with all of the flight data.”

“That’d be helpful on Earth if black boxes did that,” Lily remarked, thinking of all the aviation mysteries that this technology could unlock.

“That’s not what makes it interesting though. The graffiti on it does. It’s Old High Gallfireyan, the lost language of the Time Lords.”

“Is wherever that language comes from where you’re from?”

“Yes, Gallifrey, but we’re getting off track. This language has been dead for centuries. There were many days, Lily, when these words would burn stars, raise and topple empires, destroy gods.”

Lily nodded. “And this writing says.”

Leonard looked down and sighed in exasperation. “Hello, Sweetie.”

“Hello, Sweetie?” Lily snorted. “I guess even Time Lords had their graffiti.”

Leonard shook his head “It’s not some juvenile stunt entirely. Someone’s said that to me. That same person might be trying to get my attention. Either way, I want to get a good look.”

He pulled out the sonic screwdriver and aimed it at the glass case. There was a click, and Leonard opened it up. He shot her a quick look.

“Get ready to run back to the TARDIS.”

“Why?’

“Because we’re stealing this,” he said as he grabbed the home box and set the lid back down.

Alarms began to wail around the hall. Two guards came out from the end of it and saw them. Leonard took off running with the home box. Lily ran after him a second later, going as fast as she could. She’d just become part of a museum theft.

Sara’s stunts would seem like small potatoes by the time she went back home.

* * *

_ 12,000 years ago _

Sara Lance strode down the halls of the ship, heels clicking on the metal floor. Finding the door she was searching for, a smile spread across her face. Pulling the gun from her bag, she shot the lock open, revealing the home box inside. Slipping on some protective glasses and making a quick change to the gun’s settings, she tilted the shiny black box toward her. With her new blowtorch in hand, she carved her message into the home box. Once the ship crashed (and it would), it would fly off back home and get stored in a museum. Sooner or later, the Doctor would find it as he mocked artifact dating and would look into it.

At least, she really hoped he would.

After her message was burned into the home box, Sara turned around and walked back out into the hall. She pulled off her glasses as she caught sight of a security camera. Throwing a wink at it, she continued her path down the halls until she found exactly what she was looking for. Reaching into her bag once more, she pulled out the blast charge and attached it to the door.

A second after she’d set it, Sara heard running footsteps slow to a halt and the click of guns.

“The party ended a long time ago, Dr. Lance,” Adam Hunt said behind her. “And somehow you remain onboard.”

“I’m ever the curious type, Hunt,” Sara shrugged. “Sorry, but I had to see what was in your vault.”

She looked back at the soldiers pointing their guns at her. “Do you know what’s down there? Any of you have any ideas?”

Hunt gave her a calculating look.

“Here’s something you might like to hear,” she smirked. “This ship won’t reach its destination.”

“Wait until she runs,” Hunt ordered his men. “I don’t want this to look like an execution. The last thing we need are questions.”

Sara spotted another camera close by. She lifted her wrist and tapped her bracelet to see where she was currently at in space. Better to be exact than to speculate with the Doctor.

“Triple seven five slash three four nine by ten,” she read out, shooting a smile at the camera. “Zero twelve slash acorn.”

Flicking her eyes downward, she saw the charge was getting closer to zero. “And I’d like an air corridor.”

Hunt frowned. “What are you saying?”

“Nothing important to you,” Sara replied. “But how about a piece of advice? You might want to find something to hold onto.”

She stepped aside to reveal the charge. Hunt and his men’s eyes widened before they scrambled over to grasp onto the pipes on the sides of the wall. Sara gave them a wink as the door behind her opened up and she was sucked out into space. She floated away from the starliner, knowing it would be destined to die. Its cargo wouldn’t though.

When she found herself about to breathe and heard the familiar noise, she knew he’d found her.

* * *

Leonard opened the doors up as soon as they arrived at the coordinates Sara had sent him. As soon as he did, the woman landed right on top of him, sending them down onto the floor. Sara looked down at him with a smile. She wore a long green dress that looked more fitting for a party than sneaking around in a spaceship. Leonard frowned up at her, wondering if this Sara had met him yet. Was this what she meant when she’d said it wasn’t the end? Was this their beginning, or just his?

“Hello, sweetie,” she laughed.

“Sara?” Leonard gaped up at her.

Lily tilted her head at him. “Leonard?”

“Oh good, you’re going by Leonard,” Sara rolled off him and climbed to her feet. “We need to follow that ship.”

Leonard turned towards the empty doors to see the starliner shooting off into space. The TARDIS suddenly lurched into flight after it. He caught himself against the doors before closing them shut. Whirling around, he saw Sara at the console of the TARDIS hurrying back and forth between switches. Lily was staring at her with her mouth open.

“What the hell are you doing?” he shouted, moving towards the console.

“Following the ship,” Sara told him, swinging the screen on the console towards him. “They’re putting it into warp drive. If I don’t stay close, we lose them.”

“Lose who?” he asked. “And when did there become a we?”

“Later,” she said as the TARDIS began to shake. “The stabilizers, use them now!”

“There are no stabilizers,” Leonard told her. 

“Yes, there are.”

“I’ve piloted this TARDIS for hundreds of years, Sara. If there were stabilizers, I’d know about them!”

Sara rolled her eyes. “Try the blue ones.”

Leonard looked down at the blue knobs. Since the console room had changed up, so had the console itself. Most things were the same, but a few things he’d needed to figure out again. But the stabilizers had never been part of the console ever.

“You’re sure?” he asked, hovering his hand over them.

Sara reached over and twisted them. Immediately, the shaking ceased.

“Positive,” she smirked before going back to the other controls.

Leonard was speechless. Lily, who’d been clinging to the railing as they’d been jostled around, now released the bars and walked over to them.

“How can she fly the TARDIS?” she asked, pointing over at Sara.

“Uh…”

“Mapping the probability vectors,” Sara murmured. “Running a full backup on the temporalized sonatry and charting the starliner’s destination. We should be at its destination in five...four...three..two…”

The boom of the TARDIS landing echoed through the room. Leonard turned to see Lily staring at Sara in admiration. He glanced over at Sara, who shot him a smile. Shaking his head, he walked over beside her to see that they had indeed landed.

“What about the noise?” Lily asked.

Sara raised her eyebrows. “The noise?”

“You know, that wheezing one,” Lily made a half-hearted imitation of it. “The one it always makes when the TARDIS lands or takes off.”

“That’s because he leaves the brakes on,” Sara turned back to him. “But then again, you do love to make an entrance.”

Well, this definitely wasn’t their first meeting if she knew that about him.

“Come along, Stein,” he said to Lily. “Want to see where she’s taken us?”

“As long as it’s not the insides of a Star Whale, I’m happy with anything.”

“Hold on,” Sara typed in something. “I’m running an environment check.”

Leonard stared at her again. Sara had barely been on the TARDIS and she was already proving to know everything he did about the ship, maybe even more. She was another mystery thrown at him right as he was trying to figure out how Lily existed. 

“We’re on the planet Alfava Metraxis,” Sara told him and Lily. “It’s the-”

“Seventh planet of Dundra system,” Leonard finished. “Oxygen rich environment means we don’t need suits to go out. Days are eleven hours.”

He opened the door, staring out at the waves hitting the shores. Looking up, he could see the smoking wreck of the starliner. 

“Also, there’s a chance of rain later,” he said, shutting the doors and glancing over at Sara. “Hope you have an umbrella or raincoat.”

Sara narrowed her eyes at him as she stepped down the stairs. “You think you’re so cool when you do that, don’t you.”

Lily snickered and looked at Sara. “So how can you fly the TARDIS?”

“I had my lessons from the very best.”

Leonard began to smile smugly.

“It’s just a shame you were busy that day, Leonard,” Sara added.

He stopped smiling. Sara just kept deepening the mystery around her the longer she hung around.

“So why did they land here?” the blonde murmured, walking up to the doors.

“Define ‘land’,” Leonard said.

Sara frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“We found the home box,” he explained, pushing the door open to show her. “The starliner crashed, Sara.”

“What?”

* * *

Lily watched as Sara exited the TARDIS before turning back to Leonard. There was something familiar about her, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. “Who is she?”

“Part of my future, I believe,” Leonard replied, closing the doors. “But she’s where she needs to be. We can go wherever we want now.”

“How come?” Lily ran in front of Leonard to stop him from getting to the console. “It’s not like this is a taxi and we have to be on a schedule.”

“True, except-”

“And she said there was a planet out there,” Lily grinned.

Leonard nodded. “She did.”

“A planet. An actual alien planet.”

“You want to see it, don’t you?” he sighed.

“Well, you may have seen other planets before, but I haven’t!” she said. “I’ve seen the future and the past. What’s the point of running off so soon? Why don’t we stick around and explore it?”

“Because the last time I crossed paths with Sara, it didn’t end well,” Leonard told her. “She’s my future, Lily. I know she gets out alive, but I don’t know if I will, or even if you will.”

“Come on, five minutes,” Lily pleaded. “Please? I’m sure we’ll be fine. What could be worst than a Star Whale mouth or Daleks?”

“A lot,” Leonard opened the doors. “But if you really want to, go ahead.”

“Like you’re not curious about this too,” Lily told him.

As she stepped outside, the scientist found herself gazing up at the cliff in front of her. It looked like some sort of structure was built right out of the rock itself. Whatever had been at the top was now marred by the enormous metal craft that had driven itself right into what could have been a dome. Bits of wreckage were burning on the large flat stones where they had landed. Lily stared around her in wonder before bouncing up and down in excitement.

“I’m on another planet!” she whispered to herself happily. Ray would be so jealous if he could see her right now.

“There’s better ones out there,” Leonard said as he stepped out of the TARDIS too.

“Well, this is my first alien planet and I think it’s amazing,” Lily shrugged as they walked over to Sara.

“Wonder what caused the Byzantium to crash,” she said as they stepped up alongside her. “It wasn’t me.”

“After you breached the airlock, they would have sealed the other sectors off anyways,” Leonard said. “The home box said it happened because the warp engine was out of phase shift. No survivors came out of this.”

“Well, the universe is better off without Adam Hunt,” Sara shrugged, glancing over at Lily. “But if the crash happened because of the phase shift, that means it was sabotaged. Guess they didn’t listen when I warned them they wouldn’t make it to their destination.”

“Did anyone up there die?” Lily pointed up the cliff structure.

“Fortunately, no,” Sara pulled out something from her bag that looked like larger, thicker phone. It reminded Lily of the devices that Liz Ten had had on Starship UK. “It was an Aplan temple at one point, but they’ve been dead for centuries. At least they won’t see one of their temples destroyed.”

Leonard started to turn away.

“Are you going to introduce me?” Lily joked.

Leonard eyed Sara and shrugged. “Dr. Lily Stein, Professor Sara Lance.”

Sara whirled around, eyes bright with excitement. “I’m going to be a professor one day? That’s exciting!”

Leonard groaned. “Timelines.”

“Spoilers, crook,” Sara laughed.

The nagging feeling that she’d met Sara before persisted, but Lily ignored it. “How did you know to write on the home box?”

Sara turned to her and smiled. “Two things always show up at museums. Artifacts like a Category Four starliner’s home box, and then that one to either mock dating methods. Although sometimes he likes to nick something shiny.”

Lily shook her head. “He does really get on how incorrect things are in there.”

“Oh, he does,” Sara said, typing something on the device she held.

“Ha ha,” Leonard muttered sullenly. “I’m not going to be there for you every time you need me, Sara. The next time you decide to throw yourself out an airlock, I might not be there to catch you.”

“Next time for you or for me?” Sara smirked.

Lily began to feel like a third wheel around the two of them. There was definitely something going on between them, or at least between Sara and the future Leonard. Their banter had her convinced of it.

“You’re wrong about survivors,” Sara continued. “There’s actually one in there. A thing is lurking within that wreckage. Something that can’t ever die.”

She seemed to have said the magic words to get Leonard’s attention. Lily was even more intrigued by Sara now. The woman winked at her and held the communicator to her ear.

“Are you all in orbit?” she asked as she walked away. “I’m waiting for you at the crash site. Hone in on my signal.”

Lily tilted her head as she realized who Sara Lance reminded her of as the woman asked Leonard to use his sonic to boost her signal. This Sara was like her own best friend Sara. The two looked nothing alike, but the personalities were the same. Sara Lance seemed just as mischievous and prone to getting into trouble as Sara Saunders was back on Earth.

“We’ve got a minute before they arrive,” she told them, flicking her eyes over to Lily as she pulled a worn blue book from her bag “So where are we anyways? Have we done Jurgen’s Ridge yet?”

Lily watched as Sara flipped the pages. “What’s that?”

“My diary,” Sara told her.

“Don’t read it, Lily,” Leonard warned. “Her past and my future. We can’t seem to meet in the right order.”

“We never do,” Sara corrected. “But we never let that get in the way.”

A gusting noise alerted Lily to look behind her. A series of miniature whirlwinds sprang up and men in combat fatigues appeared from them. One who Lily guessed was the leader started forward with the others following after him. Sara straightened up and gave a little wave to them.

“Hi boys,” she greeted.

The leader stopped in front of her and looked Lily and Leonard up and down. “You promised me an army, Dr. Lance.”

“No, no” Sara shook her head. “What I promised you was the  _ equivalent _ of an army. And I delivered. I’d like you to meet the Doctor.”

She gestured towards Leonard. The leader’s eyes widened as a look of astonishment crossed his face.

“Father Walter, Bishop Second Class,” he said, shaking Leonard’s hand. “I have twenty clerics at my command. Troops are already in a drop ship and will be landing shortly. Dr. Lance here has been assisting us on a covert investigation.”

Leonard gave a wary look to Sara. “Investigation?”

Walter looked surprised. “Dr. Lance didn’t tell you what we’re dealing with?”

“She hasn’t,” Leonard said, turning towards Sara. 

Sara glanced up at the temple and then back to Leonard. Lily again felt awkward. “Leonard, how much do you know about the Weeping Angels?”

Lily watched Leonard’s face go pale. “You can’t be serious.”

* * *

It had to be Weeping Angels. Leonard still remembered the time that he’d gotten taken to the past by one without the TARDIS. He’d never wanted to go near them again in any way. But yet now he was roped into helping the Church. As much as he hoped it would be a simple in and out, he had a feeling he and Lily had become roped into something complicated and highly dangerous.

“The Angel is trapped in the wreckage of the ship,” Walter told him, Lily, and Sara (who had since changed into fatigues that matched the soldiers) as he led them across the encampment the Church army had set up. “Our objective is to get in and neutralize it. Getting through up on top of the cliff is impossible. It’s too close to the drives for any entry.”

“Do you have a map of the temple?” Leonard asked.

Walter handed over his communicator. “Have at it.”

Leonard studied the screen for a few minutes before something caught his eye. “There’s a network of catacombs behind the cliff face. They’ll lead right up the temple and the wreckage. Have your men go in that way.”

“I can have them blow through the base of the cliffs to get into the entrance chamber,” Walter nodded.

“Catacombs?” Lily shuddered behind him.

“Technically, Miss...”

“Dr,” Lily corrected. “Dr. Lily Stein.”

Leonard caught Sara smile to herself.

“Dr. Stein,” Walter said with a nod. “My apologies. Technically, the ‘catacombs’ are known as a maze of the dead.”

“Doesn’t make it sound any better,” Lily replied.

“Father Walter!” one of the clerics jogged up to them. “We need you and Dr. Lance.”

“Excuse me, sir,” Walter said, following after the cleric. Sara walked with them, shooting a smile back at him and Lily.

Lily was giving him a funny look. Leonard shrugged as he studied the equipment of the clerics. “What?”

“People are calling you ‘sir’,” she pointed out.

“They are,” Leonard nodded. “I don’t like it though. I’m on good terms with the Church right now I think. Better to keep it that way.”

“Are they just a military group called ‘the Church’ or are they part of the actual, religious Church?” Lily asked.

“Religious,” he answered. “It’s the fifty-first century. The Church you know on Earth has long moved on.”

“Looks like they become their own military branch,” she snorted. “The Church can’t be the only ones out there as a religion. What if you’re not Christian? What if you’re Jewish? Or if you believe in some other faith?”

“Those religions don’t die,” Leonard assured her. “It’s just the Church that really gets militant.”

“Okay,” Lily leaned against the table they were in front of. “Another thing. These Weeping Angels. They’re bad, right?”

“More than you could imagine,” he turned to Lily. The mysterious aberration could be in danger here if the Angel got to her. “Maybe you should go wait this out in the TARDIS?”

“And miss out on the fun? No way!”

“Lily,” Leonard said sternly. “A Weeping Angel is one of the most powerful and malevolent life forms in existence. Walter and Sara and the other clerics are counting on me to follow after them into that wreckage with my screwdriver and flashlight. If I can survive the radiation and the wreckage doesn’t shift and bury me in a rockslide, then I have to then find a way to neutralize the Angel because I doubt the clerics really know what they’re up against. That’s not fun in any way. Still want to come?”

Lily paused for a moment before nodding. “You’re my ride. I need to make sure you get out alive.”

“I can’t talk you out of this, can I?” he sighed.

“Nope,” Lily shook her head. “Also, can I ask you something else?”

“You’ll ask it anyways so go ahead.”

The scientist grinned. “Is Sara Lance your wife?”

He sighed. “Really?”

“I’m curious!” Lily held up her hands innocently. “You said she’s someone from your future. The whole time I’ve seen you two, you’ve given off a very...married vibe. She’s going to be your wife, right?”

“I don’t know,” he told her. “You shouldn’t know too much about your own future, Lily.”

“I bet she is,” she smirked.

“Leonard!”

Leonard turned to see Sara standing outside a drop ship. Lily was failing to hid a smirk.

“Come along, Stein,” he said as he left the table and walked towards Sara.

* * *

Sara watched Leonard, Walter, and Lily study the four seconds of footage she had on the Weeping Angel. Even if it was just on the screen, she still was repressing a shudder and keeping her eye on it. Leonard looked just as unnerved. Lily, meanwhile, seemed intrigued by it. Clearly this was a very young version of her, and one who hadn’t gotten married yet by the absence of a ring.

“I got this from the security cameras in the Byzantium’s vault,” she told them. “While I was on board, I managed to snag a copy. Sorry I couldn’t get better quality, but I was on a time crunch. But I do have it on a four second loop.”

Leonard stepped forward. “You definitely found a Weeping Angel.”

“You’ve crossed Angels before?” Walter asked.

“Once,” Leonard grimaced. Sara remembered how a future version of him told her the story of it. “But they were scavengers on Earth.”

“This is a statue though,” Lily said, sounding exasperated.

Oh, she had to be brand new to this. Sara wondered how long Lily had been traveling with Leonard.

“It looks like a statue when you see it,” she explained.

Leonard turned around. “Where did this one come from?”

“Excavated from the ruins of Razbahan sometime in the last century,” Sara told him. “Ever since then it’s been circulating through private hands. Fortunately for them, it’s remained dormant that whole time.”

“Are you sure it was dormant?” Leonard asked. “Or is it just being patient?”

Oh, he was still good, even if this version of Leonard was still getting to know her.

“What did you mean when you said it looks like a statue when you see it?” Lily inquired.

“The Weeping Angels can only move if they’re unseen,” Sara told her. “Or that’s what the legends say.”

“Legend? Try quantum lock,” Leonard scoffed. “If any living thing sees a Weeping Angel, then the Angels literally cease to exist and become stone. It’s a great defense mechanism.”

“It’s just...stone for defense? That’s interesting.”

Leonard nodded at Lily. “And it stays that way until you turn your back. Then boom! The Weeping Angel comes to life. It’s one of the fastest predators you’d ever cross...and the last one too.”

* * *

According to Walter, the time drive had split open and was releasing out all sorts of radiation and other temporal by-products into the catacombs. While it was deadly to most living things, it was fuel for a Weeping Angel to make it grow stronger. The Aplans had been dead for four hundred years, but the planet had since been populated with a few billion human colonists who were now at risk with the Weeping Angel on planet. Walter was working with his men to get into the catacombs while Sara had taken away Leonard to show him something.

Lily was left with nothing and returned to the drop ship they’d been watching the clip of the Angel in. She stared at the creature on the screen in the time loop. Something was different now though. Instead of hiding its face in its hands, it was now looking over its shoulder. Confused, Lily backed up and peeked her head out of the drop ship.

“Dr. Lance!” she called out to where the woman was now handing a book to Leonard. “Did you have any other clips of the Weeping Angel?”

“Just call me Sara, and no. That one is the only one.”

Weird. Lily shook her head and returned back inside.

The Angel was now facing the camera head on.

Lily looked at the corner, watching the four seconds play on a loop. When she looked back to the Angel, she stepped back with a gasp. It was now closer to the screen. Its palms faced out and upward at its sides. The face was expressionless, but it just made thing creepier. 

“How?” she murmured.

Keeping her eyes on the screen, Lily stepped over to a table to grab the remote she’d seen Sara use for the screen. She pressed the off button, smiling as the screen went black. A second passed before it switched back on again. When she repeated the action, the footage kept switching back on. Each time, the Angel seemed to have inched a little closer.

“You’re a recording,” she said aloud, walking closer to the screen. “You can’t move.”

Looking down, she found the plug for the television and tried to pull it out. It wouldn’t budge, even when she tugged it hard. The Angel’s face was right in front of hers on the screen when she glanced back up. Lily immediately backed away. This was starting to feel like a something out of a horror movie.

“Leonard?” Lily called out, walking backwards to keep an eye on the Angel. 

The door to the drop ship had been open before. Now it was sealed shut. She looked down briefly to try and turn the wheel to open it. It refused to budge. Lily lifted her head back up to see the expression on the Angel frozen in a menacing, fanged snarl.

“Leonard!” she shouted, staring at the Angel’s eyes.

* * *

“This doesn’t make sense,” Leonard set the book Sara had given him down. “Everything in here is a warning about the Weeping Angels, but there’s no pictures. Why would you warn someone about them if you won’t show them what to look out for?”

Sara put her hands on her hips, frowning. “Read that bit about images again.”

Leonard flipped to the page and recited the passage. “That which holds the image of an Angel becomes in itself an Angel.”

“What’s that supposed to mean about the image of an Angel becoming an Angel?” Sara stopped. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Leonard realized what it meant.

“Lily,” Sara looked back at the drop ship and its sealed door. “She’s with it.”

* * *

“Leonard!” Lily shrieked, trying the keypad now with the combination she’s seen Walter use. “Sara! Walter! Someone!”

The angel was now a hologram in front of the screen. Lily could feel her heart hammering. All her curiosity was being replaced by fear. She wanted to know what would happen if it got to her since it was a hologram, but at the same time she didn’t with the evil look on its face. Dying on another planet far from home was not something she wanted.

“Lily!” she heard Sara’s muffled voice on the other side. “What’s happening?”

“It’s come out of the screen,” Lily said. “It’s just a hologram but it’s been moving when I look away.”

“Don’t look away!” Leonard’s voice ordered. “Keep watching it and it won’t move. Don’t even blink, Lily.”

She now wanted to blink, but resisted. “Open the door and let me out!”

“It’s not opening,” Leonard said.

“We’ll get you out, Lily,” Sara added. “I swear to you, you will make it through this.”

“ _ I hope you’re right _ ,” Lily thought as she kept her eyes on the Angel.

“Have you tried turning the screen off?” Leonard asked.

“Yes, and it just came back on,” Lily replied. “And the plug wouldn’t budge when I tried to yank it out.”

“Dammit. Just...don’t blink, Lily.”

“I know, I know,” she said, desperately wanting to blink.

Then she finally noticed it. Every four seconds, there was a blip in the tape. The Angel hologram would shudder during that blip. Lily walked forward, keeping eye contact with the angel as she felt around the table for the controller. All she had to do was time it just right.

“Can you at least tell me why the recording is doing this?” she shouted as she missed the blip and it flickered back to life.

“It’s not a recording anymore,” Leonard’s reply came through the door. “It’s an Angel now. Whatever takes the image of an Angel is an Angel.”

“So I’m with a Weeping Angel right now?” Lily swallowed. “What’s it going to do to me if it gets me?”

“Don’t stop looking!”

“No, tell me!”

Leonard didn’t answer.

“Leonard?” she called out. 

What if this was it? Was this how the story of Lily Stein ended? At the hands of an alien that turned to stone when you looked at it? She didn’t want it be the end. There was her life back on Earth. She was supposed to be getting married in the next day in her own time.

“Lily, don’t look it in the eyes.”

That’s where she had been staring at it the whole time. She lowered her gaze towards its shoulders. “Why?”

She heard Sara mumble something inaudible, to which Leonard gave an equally inaudible reply. The only words she was able to make out were ‘soul’ and ‘doors’. “What?”

“Don’t make eye contact!”

She couldn’t wait for them anymore. Lily held out the remote, finger hovering over the off button. When the blip happened, she hit the button. The angel froze in the static, and she finally heard the door open behind her. The angel disappeared and the television shut off.

“I froze it,” she sighed, closing her eyes finally. “There was a blip on the tape and I froze it then. It no longer was the image of an Angel.”

She reopened her eyes to watch Leonard approach the screen and yank the plug on it. Sara stood beside her, watching her with concern.

“That was freaky,” Lily confessed. “I really don’t like those things now.”

“But you did amazing stopping it,” Sara told her.

“Sara, hug Lily,” Leonard instructed, giving her a nod as he turned back to the plug with his sonic.

“How come?”

“I’m busy and she’s there.”

Sara looked hesitant. Lily stepped forward, holding her arms out awkwardly. The blonde smiled and embraced her quickly. Lily had a feeling that they’d hugged before. Maybe a past version of Sara was going to hug a future version of her or something.

“You were brilliant,” Sara told her after letting her go.

Lily blushed a little. “Thanks.”

“Nice job under pressure,” Leonard said, dropping the plug. 

“So was the Angel was here?” Sara asked him.

“It was a projection of an Angel,” he told them. “It was scouting around to get a look at us. That means it’s no longer dormant.”

“Oh, great,” Lily muttered as an explosion echoed in the distance.

“Doctor!” Walter shouted in the distance. “We’ve made it through.”

Leonard walked over to the door of drop ship. “And now it starts.”

Sara rolled her eyes as they watched him exit. “He’s so dramatic.”

Lily snorted as Sara made her way to the door. Then she felt something. Bringing her hand up to her face, she rubbed her with her finger. 

“Lily?” Sara had stopped. “Are you coming?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “Just had something in my eye.”

It still felt like it was there, and she rubbed it again as she left.

* * *

When they all made it down a ladder to the maze of the dead, the clerics distributed flashlights to everyone. Walter ordered a gravity globe to be released into the air. Leonard watched it sail into the air and illuminate their surroundings. All around them were stone statues for the Aplans’ maze of the dead. Finding the Weeping Angel would be difficult in here.

“This is going to be tricky,” Walter said. “One Weeping Angel among hundreds of stone statues.”

“It’s a needle in a haystack,” Sara said beside him. “Then again, when is anything you get involved in easy?”

“You’re going to be around a lot in my future if you know me about me,” Leonard told her.

Sara shrugged. “Spoilers.”

“Check every single statue in this chamber,” Walter ordered all of them. “You know what to look for. Be very through when you inspect the statues.”

A chorus of “Yes, sir” rose up from the clerics as they dispersed in groups.

“What should the course of action be to fight the Angel?” Walter asked Leonard.

There wasn’t a good answer he could give to the bishop. “Just find it and hope.”

With that, Leonard started off in one direction with Lily.

* * *

“He doesn’t know yet, does he?” Walter asked.

Sara swallowed, but didn’t reply.

“He has no idea who you are, what you are?” the bishop continued. “He doesn’t know about the Canary and the things you did.”

“No,” Sara shook his head. “For him, it’s too early. He doesn’t really know me yet.”

“ _ Neither of them do _ ,” her brain reminded her.

“Don’t let him figure it out,” Walter ordered. “If he does, then we lose his help. And we need him to stop this creature.”

“He won’t find out,” Sara said, resuming her trek after Leonard and Lily. “I’ll make sure of it.”

* * *

Lily gazed around her at the statues as she followed after Leonard. She couldn’t think of anything on Earth that was like in in scale. Sure, it was a little dark and damp and cold. Even though catacombs gave her the creeps, this was incredible. How many humans could do what they were doing right now?

She stopped staring up at the levels of statues. Something was in her eye again, and it wasn’t going away. Whatever it was, it was really beginning to bug her. With a sigh, she rubbed the palm of her hand against her eye.

Something trickled out through her fingers. It felt coarse and grainy.

Lily jerked her hand away from her face. There was nothing in her hand. Smooth warm flesh was beneath her fingers as she traced her finger along the area where she’d felt the stuff come from. She crouched down to the ground, but couldn’t tell if the gray rock dust was already part of the ground or if it had come from her.

“Are you okay?”

The sound of Sara’s voice made Lily start a little. She bolted up in surprise.

“Me?” she nodded. “Fine. Just had something in my eye.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah,” Lily shined her flashlight up at the ceiling. “So...maze of the dead?”

“It’s not that bad,” Sara shrugged. “Think of your Earth’s catacombs. Except this is on a larger scale with more dead people buried in the walls.”

“Great,” Lily muttered sarcastically.

“Fine, maybe it does sound a little bad,” Sara admitted. “But at least they won’t be rising up and coming out to play. Now, can you hold out your arm?”

“Why?” Lily asked, extending the limb to Sara.

“Don’t worry,” Sara held up what seemed to be a futuristic version of a syringe that made a whining noise. “It’s only a precaution, and it won’t hurt a bit.”

She pressed the end against Lily’s bare skin. A sharp pain went through her entire arm. Lily gasped out and blinked her eyes as the pain slowly faded.

“You said it wouldn’t hurt!”

“Yeah, I lied about that,” Sara kept the end on her arm for a few more seconds. “Virus stabilizer. Now your metabolism is stabilized against radiation and any other nasty side effects that could happen once we get up the Byzantium.”

“Sooo thanks?”

“You’re welcome,” Sara let her arm go.

Lily looked ahead at where Leonard was pacing around one of the statues. “Hey, Sara?”

“Yes?”

“What’s future Leonard like?” she asked, keeping her voice as innocent as possible.

Sara looked somewhat surprised. “I’m sorry?”

“Come on, you know him in the future, right?”

“Leonard is Leonard,” Sara told her with a shrug. “He’s still the Doctor. That’s all you need to know.”

“So still a bit of a crook who makes snarky comments and has a heart of gold,” Lily examined one of the statues. It didn’t look like the hologram from earlier, so she ruled it out as an Angel. “Nothing seems to change then.”

Sara laughed. “We are!”

“Huh?” Leonard looked back at them.

“Talking about you,” Sara said smugly.

“I haven’t been listening,” Leonard retorted, holding a device to a statue. “Maybe you haven’t heard, but there’s an Angel on the loose.”

“Uh huh,” Sara’s expression grew even more smug. “And you’re holding it upside down.”

Leonard flipped the device over silently, not looking at them. Lily pressed her lips together to hold back a giggle.

“You’re his wife in the future, aren’t you?” she asked Sara.

“Ah, Lily,” Sara tutted. “This is an alien who has lived hundreds of years and can change his face. Can it really be that simple?”

“I don’t know,” Lily looked between them. “It’s hard not to picture you two together.”

That made Sara laugh. “You’re good, Lily.”

“But am I right?”

“You are very good,” Sara told her. “And that’s all I’m going to say about it. Now come on. We have an Angel to find.”

* * *

Leonard studied the statue in front of him carefully. It definitely didn’t look like an Angel, so he could rule it out as that. But there was something off about it. He couldn’t put his finger on it though. 

A hail of gunfire broke his concentration. Lily and Sara turned toward it in surprise. Leonard abandoned the statue he’d been inspecting and ran towards its source. If one of the clerics had found the Angel, bullets wouldn’t stop it. They’d only make the Angel angrier.

However, they only arrived to see another statue that wasn’t an Angel now marred by bullet holes and a trembling cleric with a gun.

“Sorry,” he said meekly as Walter approached him. “Coulda sworn I saw it move and look at me.”

“We know what the Angel looks like,” Walter said coldly. “Does that look like the Angel?”

“No, sir.”

“No, sir, it is not,” Walter snapped, shaking his head. “According to the Doctor, we are facing an enemy of unknown power and infinite evil. So it would be good to remain calm and not go shooting your gun about just because you looked the wrong way.”

Leonard couldn’t stand to let the cleric (although he was so baby-faced Leonard could barely believe they’d let him in on this mission) take Walter’s tirade anymore. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Jason, sir.”

“Jason?” Lily repeated. Clearly she hadn’t been expecting that as an answer.

“It is a sacred name,” Walter told her. “We all have sacred names that are given to us in the service of the church.”

Leonard tried not to roll his eyes as he approached them. “So, sacred Jason. You’re freaked out now, aren’t you?”

Jason looked between him and Walter before nodding. “Yes, sir.”

“Don’t bother with the sir,” Leonard said. “But it’s a good thing you’re scared. If you’re scared, then you’ll be fast. Anyone who isn’t scared in this room is an idiot.”

Walter gave him a dirty look.

“Well, don’t stand around,” Leonard said to him. “There’s an Angel on the loose.”

Jason smiled briefly. Walter sighed and turned back to Leonard, Lily, and Sara.

“We’ll be moving into the maze itself in two minutes,” he instructed before turning to Jason. “Jason, stay with Damian and Tim and help them guard the approach. The rest of you, follow me.”

Jason moved aside to let them pass. Leonard offered a half smile to him as they walked by him. He hoped that Jason would make it through this. It was a slim chance, but Jason seemed like a good kid. A little trigger happy and too green for this assignment of hunting down a Weeping Angel, but still a good kid.

“The Byzantium isn’t going to cause this to collapse on top of us, right?” Lily asked him as they walked through a small tunnel build into into the rock. “I mean, didn’t you say something about a rockslide earlier?”

“I said it so you wouldn’t stick your neck out for this,” Leonard muttered.

“You don’t have to worry, Lily,” Sara assured her. “The Aplans were extremely skilled builders.”

“You know, I had dinner with their chief architect once,” Leonard told her, remembering the occasion now. “Both of them were good company.”

“Both?” Lily inquired.

“Aplans are a two headed race,” he explained, studying another statue. The nagging feeling that something was wrong came back to him. “Sara...that book you gave me. What did the last passage of it say?”

“One second,” Sara started to rummage behind him. “Here we are. What if we had ideas that could think for themselves? What if one day our dreams no longer needed us? When these things occur and are held to be true, the time will be upon us. The time of Angels.”

Leonard shined his flashlight on at the upper half of the statue before him.

Still not an Angel.

* * *

“Are we there yet?” Lily asked, knowing she probably sounded like a whiny seven year old on a long road trip.

“Not quite,” Sara said from up ahead. “There are six levels to this maze. For the Aplans, this represented the ascent of one’s soul. We’re only on level four right now.”

“I’d rather be in the Labyrinth,” she muttered. “At least that was only one level.”

“The Labyrinth is much more complicated than that,” Leonard told her. “We should stop there sometime.”

“I can only imagine what this was like at the height of Aplan civilization,” Sara murmured, swinging her light up the ceiling. Lily gazed at the columns carved right out of the rock and the intricate patterns on them.

“They were a pretty great species,” Leonard told them. “Maybe we should see them after the Labyrinth.”

“You said the Aplans were dead though,” Lily frowned, then realized what he meant. “Oh, right. Time machine.”

“Exactly,” he nodded. “But the times I met the Aplans, they were always relaxed and cheerful. I was amazed by that. If I had a second head, I’d be arguing with myself constantly.”

“Two of you would tear the other apart,” Sara murmured. “Anyone else have the feeling something’s wrong?”

Lily shook her head. Leonard, on the other hand, nodded. “Can’t figure out what yet.”

“Me neither,” Sara murmured.

Lily looked around her. She didn’t know what was making them suspicious. Clearly they found something even more stranger within a maze of creepy statues. Whatever it was, she wasn’t picking up on it. She started to look around her more as Walter took the lead of the group and continued to ignore whatever it was in her eye.

“The wreckage is only fifty feet up from where we are now,” Walter said as they walked past more statues. 

“And away from these statues,” Lily muttered before something hit her. “Leonard, you said Aplans had two heads, right?”

“Yes.”

“Lily shined her flashlight on the statue to her left. “How come all the statues have one head then?”

* * *

Leonard stopped in his tracks as Lily asked the question. It had been staring him in the face the entire time, and now he was getting it.

Sara’s eyes widened as it dawned on her too. “Oh.”

“You’re right,” Leonard muttered, shaking his head.

“How come we never realized this?” Sara muttered.

“Either it’s a low level perception filter or we’re all just idiots.”

Lily looked between them. “Wait, what’s wrong?”

“No one move,” Leonard ordered, backing away from the statue he was in front of. “Bishop, I’m sorry about this. We’ve walked right in the middle of it.”

“The middle of what?” Walter asked.

“An ambush,” Sara said. “Bishop, think about what Lily just said. If the Aplans had two heads, what’s with the statues having only one?”

Lily swallowed. “So these are not the Aplans’ then?”

“Nope,” Leonard shook his head. The statues weren’t Aplans, but he needed to be certain that they were indeed Angels.

“Everyone into that corner there,” he pointed to a spot in the room where there were no statues. “No questions. Just do as I tell you and we might just get out of this alive.”

Walter, Sara, Lily, and all the clerics followed his orders. Leonard walked backwards slowly towards them. He kept his eyes on the statues as he took his steps carefully. When he brushed back against Sara, he stopped.

“All of you shut off your lights,” he instructed.

“Sir-”

“Do it, Walter,” Sara snapped.

One by one, the lights went out until Leonard’s was the only one remaining.

“I’m going shut mine off for a second.”

“Leonard,” Sara sounded wary beside him. “Are you sure this is going to work?”

“Only one way to find out,” he replied as he plunged them into darkness before bringing back the light.

The statues had been in different directions before, but now all of them were facing the group.

“Oh crap,” Lily said on his other side as the other members of the group turned their flashlights back on.

“They’re all Angels,” Leonard confirmed. “No one take your eyes off of them.”

He ran past one statue that was now crouched on the floor and out to the edge of a cliff. Lily and Sara were right on his tail. Shining his light down, he could see more statues on the steps they’d taken to get up here. When they’d first taken them, they hadn’t been there. Now, it would be impossible to get up without running into one.

“Every statue in here is a Weeping Angel,” he murmured. “They’re coming after us.”

“So can you tell me now what happens when they catch up to us?” Lily asked him.

* * *

“There was only one Angel on the ship, I swear,” Sara protested as the trio ran back to the clerics.

“Were the rest already here?” Lily asked her. “What if they caused the Aplans to go extinct?”

“No one knows how they died out,” Sara told her. “It’s a mystery among archaeologists.”

“I think I know how it happened now,” Leonard muttered, keeping his flashlight on the Angels.

Walter shook his head. “But they don’t look like Angels.”

Lily had to agree. The statues looked more along the lines of Grecian or Roman.

“You said they were fast, right?” Lily said to Leonard. “They don’t seem to be that fast. How fast can they get, actually?”

Leonard shook his head. “They’re in a weakened state. See how they’re crumbling and cracked? The Aplans practically sealed them in. Since Weeping Angels can’t die, they’ve been starving instead for centuries.”

It sounded like a Weeping Angel hell. Lily shined her flashlight on the face of one Angel. She couldn’t see the features on it like she had with the one in the drop ship. However, there was a long crack running down where an eye should have been. “It’s made them lose their image.”

“Not to mention their power since their image is the source of it,” Leonard added. “And since the Byzantium crashed in here, they’ve been getting that through the leaking time drive. I’m willing to bet this wasn’t an accidental crash now.”

“What was it then?” Walter asked.

“A rescue mission to restore the Angels.”

Lily watched Sara glance nervously at her, then over towards Leonard. “We all need to leave right now.”

“Agreed,” Walter pulled out a communicator. “Jason, Damian, Tim, do you read me?”

“Jason reporting, sir.”

“Jason, do you have eyes on Damian and Tim?” Walter asked. “All the statues in here are active. We need to evacuate immediately.”

“I know, sir,” Jason replied. Lily noted that he didn’t sound very scared. “Tim and Damian are dead. They were killed by the statues.”

Lily shuddered as Leonard moved over to Walter.

“Jason,” Leonard took the communicator from Walter. “This is the Doctor. Where are you now?”

“I am making my way up to you. I am homing in on your signal.”

“Something doesn't feel right about this,” Lily said aloud to Sara.

Leonard didn’t hear her. “Told you that you’ll be fast if you’re scared.”

“Yes, sir.”

“What did the Angel do to your friends, Jason?”

“Snapped their necks,” Jason said emotionlessly.

“No,” Leonard seemed confused. “An Angel kills you by displacing you in time and feeding off that time energy. It needs the bodies for something then.”

Walter snatched the communicator back. “Jason, did you check for vital signs on their data packs? If there’s something, we could initiate a rescue.”

“That won’t work,” Leonard told him, taking the communicator back. “The Angels don’t care if you’re dead or alive. Jason, keep moving and tell us how you escaped.”

“I didn’t.”

Lily’s eyes widened. This just got a lot creepier.

“I didn’t escape,” Jason repeated. “The Angel killed me too.”

Sara straightened up. Lily watched as Leonard looked over at her. Her eye was starting to itch again.

“Jason,” Leonard said slowly into the communicator. “What do you mean the Angel killed you too?”

“My neck was snapped. It wasn’t painless, but it was over quickly.”

“How is he talking to us?” Lily asked, and Leonard relayed the question through the communicator.

“You’re not talking with me,” Jason said. “You’re speaking to the Angel. It has no voice, so it stripped my cerebral cortex from my body, then reanimated my consciousness to communicate with you.”

“So you’re not the one coming up,” Leonard sighed. “It’s the Angel.”

“Angels. There are many of us.”

Lily groaned softly. This was getting more and more creepy by the minute. 

“Enough of this,” Walter said, taking the communicator back from Leonard. “We need to get out through the wreckage and fast. The Angels will not have mercy on us.”

Sara pulled Lily along as the clerics began to start running. Leonard didn’t run, but instead started talking to Walter. Lily tried to stay, but Sara tugged her along again. They made their way across a stone bridge with her in the rear. She set her hand down on the stone for a moment and looked back before attempting to move forward.

Her arm didn’t budge. Lily looked down to see her hand had turned to stone. Grabbing her wrist with her other hand, she ran a hand over it. There was no sensation in it whatsoever.

“What are you doing?” Leonard demanded as he passed by. “The Angels are coming.”

Lily inhaled slowly. “Leonard, I can’t move.”

He stopped and backtracked to her. “Lily…”

“I can’t,” she glanced down at her hand. “Look at my hand.”

He followed her gaze. “Looks fine.”

“It’s not!” she protested. “It’s stone!”

“Lily, it’s-” he stopped. “You looked into the Angel’s eyes earlier, didn’t you?”

She nodded guiltily. “I didn’t know you weren’t supposed to until you said something.”   
“Whatever. But I can tell you your hand isn’t stone. The Angel is messing with your perception. That’s flesh, not stone.”

“It’s stone!” Lily shouted. “I can’t move my hand. Nothing is messing with me. I know what I’m seeing. I even touched it and it’s stone, okay? It won’t move.”

“No, you can move it,” Leonard said. “Once you move it, then you can let go and we can run before the Angels kill us.”

He didn’t get it! How could he not see what was right in front of them? “It won’t move!”

“Not with that attitude,” he snarked as the beam of his flashlight flickered. “Lily, you have to move it. The Angels are coming, they’ll turn off the light, and there’s nothing I can do to save you. So instead of denying it, concentrate and move your hand.”

She tried, but it remained stone.

“Just save yourself,” Lily urged. “You have a future ahead of you with Sara. There’s probably more stuff in between whenever you guys met up. You know you can’t die here.”

“Time can be rewritten,” Leonard countered. “And you told me you have your stuff tomorrow. I can’t lose you to Weeping Angels, Lily.”

He looked over her shoulder. “Turn around and keep watching the Angels.”

She followed his instructions. “Now go.”

“That’s not happening,” Leonard snapped. “I am not leaving you here. I will not lose you before I’ve figured you out!”

She had no idea what he meant by that, but she continued to watch the Angels instead of turning around. “Leonard, go. You are not dying for me.”

“I’m sorry for this, Lillian.”

“Just do it, okay?” she told him, wondering if the Angels had gotten closer as the flashlight kept flickering. “There’s more people to save up there anyways.”

“Sure, but that’s not what I’m sorry for.”

A sharp pain went through the hand that was stone. Lily jerked it away with a shout. Her wrist throbbed, but it was now flesh again. She looked over to Leonard, who was holding a sort of joy buzzer.

“What did you do?”

“Minor electric shock,” Leonard said, pocketing the buzzer. “But now you see it isn’t stone, so let’s get out of here.”

“You shocked me!” she exclaimed as she whirled back around to keep watching the Angels.

“Would you rather I bit you?” he snapped back. 

She sighed. “Fine, but I’m still not happy about that.”

“You’re alive, that’s all that counts right now. Go down that tunnel. It goes right to the Byzantium wreck.”

“How do you even have a joy buzzer?” Lily asked as she started backing up.

“You want to have that discussion now or later when Angels aren’t trying to kill us?”

“Good point.”

* * *

“We’re surrounded on all sides,” one of the clerics was reporting to Walter as Leonard caught up to them. “And my torch keeps flickering.”

“So is the gravity globe,” Sara gestured upwards before turning to look at him.

“That would be the Angels,” Leonard said, studying the globe above them as it struggled to stay lit. “They’re sucking the power from everything as they get closer to us. Soon, we’ll be in the dark.”

“And we won’t be able to see them,” Walter finished. He was starting to look uneasy now.

Sara moved closer to him. “Tell me you have an idea.”

“I did when I came in here,” he replied. “It’s gone off the rails. So that means it’s time for step four.”

She shook her head. “It always comes down to step four.”

“What’s step four?” Lily asked.

Leonard smirked. “Throw the plan away.”

“We can’t go back,” Walter told them. “The Angels are blocking our passage that way. The only other way would be up, but we neglected to pack climbing equipment.”

“So we’re trapped?” one of the clerics said.

“Yes,” Sara said calmly. “But this is when he usually come up with something.”

Leonard studied the surroundings, his eyes finally landing up on the gravity globe hovering above them. It was providing light right now, but that wasn’t it’s only purpose…

“Is the Doctor there?” Jason’s voice came from Walter’s communicator.

Leonard closed his eyes as Walter passed him the communicator. Poor kid didn’t deserve to have his voice used by the Angels. He shouldn’t even have been on this mission. But he had come, and the Angels had killed him. Jason was now another person who he hadn’t been able to save.

“Doctor?”

Leonard reopened his eyes. “Angels?”

“Your power will not last much longer,” Angel Jason said as the flashlights flickered. “The Angels will be with you shortly. I’m sorry about this.”

“Why?”

“Because the Angels are very eager for you to know something before your end,” Angel Jason said. “I died afraid.”

Leonard frowned. “What?”

“You said that being scared would make me fast, that it was good to be afraid,” Jason’s voice said. “You were wrong. It didn’t make me fast. I died in pain and fear all by myself. You made me trust you, but you lied to me. You let me down. It’s your fault I’m dead.”

He clenched the hand not holding the communicator into a fist.

“The Angels were very keen for you to know that.”

Leonard exhaled slowly. He knew Jason’s death was his fault. The Angels were choosing to mock him about it. They wanted to make him mad, but that was a mistake. A angry Time Lord was the last person you wanted to face. 

“You’re making your second mistake with that, Angels,” Leonard said. “Jason, I’m sorry I got you killed. But I will make sure the Angels pay for what you did.”

“How can you do that if you’re trapped and outnumbered?”

“Trapped, huh?” Leonard smirked. “You think you have the perfect trap, don’t you? Too bad it’s got a flaw.”

“A flaw?”

Leonard turned around to face Lily. “Do you trust me?”

She nodded. “I do.”

“What about you, Sara?” he asked, turning to the woman who would be playing a big role in his future.

Sara smiled. “After everything we’ve been through, yes.”

“Walter, clerics?”

All the clerics looked towards Walter. The bishop turned to Leonard and nodded. “We have faith in you, sir.”

“Good,” Leonard held out his hand. “I’m going to need your gun. A sonic screwdriver won’t do this effectively.”

Walter passed the weapon to him. Leonard weighed it in his hand.

“What are you going to do with that?” Lily asked. “Will bullets stop the Angels?”

“No,” Leonard shook his head. “But when I do this, jump. I don’t care where, but jump as high as you can.”

“Sir, what are you going to do?” Walter asked.

“Just take the leap of faith on my signal.”

“What signal?” a cleric asked.

Leonard raised the gun towards the ceiling, aiming for the gravity globe. “It’s going to be hard to miss.”

“Doctor, you mentioned we made a second mistake earlier,” Angel Jason said. “The Angels want to know what the first was if our second was angering you.”

“Here’s the thing, Angels,” Leonard announced, flicking the safety off. “You’ve made a big mistake. Don’t you know there’s one thing you never put in a trap? If you have any brain cells, care about your continued existence, or even plan to see the next day, then you should know there’s one thing you never, ever put in a trap. But you went and put it in anyways.”

“What’s that?”

“Me.”

He fired the gun at the gravity globe. A shower of sparks went up into the air as the bullet hit it.

“Jump now!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TBC.....
> 
> Reviews=Love


	5. Flesh and Stein

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lily counts, Walters shares some things about Sara, and Leonard tells Lily she's an aberration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (Yes, I had to do the pun)
> 
> Sorry this chapter took so long. Life's going to get hectic again, so I'll try and update as I'm able.

“Jump now!”

Lily followed Leonard’s orders and jumped up. The world spun for her and she closed her eyes. When she landed, she didn’t land on her feet as she’d hoped. Instead, she landed almost spread eagle. Groaning, Lily looked over at Leonard, who was climbing to his feet.

“All of you, look up,” he barked before walking to a strange light that was glowing on the ground.

“Are you okay?” Sara asked beside her as she sat up.

“Yeah,” Lily nodded. “So what happened?”

“We jumped.”

“Jumped?” Lily tilted her head as she stood up. “Jumped where?”

Sara smiled. “Exactly where we need to be.”

“Look up, Lily,” Leonard added as he bent down and got another light glowing on the ground.

Lily followed his instruction and lifted her eyes upward. She scanned past the rocky face of the tomb’s interior. A lot of the structures built inside looked different now. When she got to the ceiling, the ship was no longer up there and the Angels had taken its place. If anything, it looked like the floor they’d been standing on. Lily then looked down and realized she wasn’t on ground, but metal.

“How did we do this?”

“He shot the gravity globe,” Sara explained. “It’s artificial gravity. Just took a jump after shooting it and we fell up. The power’s still on the ship, so we can get inside to regroup for a while.”

“Huh,” Lily couldn’t help but smile. “Brilliant.”

“Doctor,” Walter interrupted. “The statues look more like Angels now.”

Lily had to agree. They now looked just like the one she had seen come from the screen earlier.

“They’re restoring themselves,” Leonard said. “They feed off the energy coming from the ship and draining the power for themselves. It’s helping them become faster and stronger. I give us an hour before it’s an army and we have a real problem on our hands.”

He aimed the sonic screwdriver at a hatch as one of the lights burst beside him.

Lily jerked back. “What the-”

“They’re taking out the lights,” Leonard told her quickly. “All of you, keep your eyes on the Angels. You all need to get into the ship, but look at the Angels.”

Lily stole a glance at the long corridor below her and remembered the artificial gravity. “Is there artificial gravity inside too?”

“Let me check,” Leonard leaped inside. “All good. Now everyone else, inside, now.”

The lights dimmed as another light burst. Sara pulled Lily back to the opening. Lily swallowed and jumped inside. She felt herself get thrown forward before landing on bent knees. Sara followed, along with the rest of the clerics and Walter. Leonard was now working on a control pad beside a panel.

“I presume the Angels can jump up too?” Walter asked as Leonard shut the hatch.

The lights flickered inside the ship as a thunk came from outside the ship.

“I think that’s a yes,” Lily said, backing up beside Sara.

“She’s right,” Leonard nodded. “They’ll finish us if we don’t-”

An alarm started to blare as a door down the hall began to slide shut.

“NO!” Leonard shouted, sprinting down towards it as another thunk came from outside.

“This place is a death trap!” Walter declared as the door closed off, sealing all of them between it and the hatch.

“You’re half right,” Leonard muttered. “It’s a death trap, and it’s also a time bomb.”

“And we’re cornered,” Lily added.

“Exactly,” Leonard nodded. “None of you panic.”

A clatter came from outside as sparks slipped through the interlocked pieces of the hatch.

“Are you sure we can’t panic a little?” Lily mumbled to him.

“No,” Leonard shook his head.  “Who here knows what’s on the other side of the door?”

“Secondary Flight Deck,” Sara answered as she opened a panel on the wall beside her.

“That’ll do,” Leonard turned around and began to work his sonic on it.

Lily sighed. “If the Angels are sucking out the power, the gravity’s going to fail on us soon.”

“Yeah,” Leonard nodded. “I thought of that.”

“Are we going to go splat if it does?”

“That sums it up.”

“Fun,” Lily muttered.

“Isn’t it?” Leonard groaned. “Security protocols are still live. They’re impossible to override.”

“How impossible?” Sara asked as she pulled out wires from the panel.

“Two minutes,” Leonard replied.

The lights died down as the hatch spun open.

* * *

“The hull is breached and the power is failing,” Walter announced as everyone looked around in the darkness.

“Really? I never noticed,” Leonard drawled as he looked towards the opening. A stone arm was reaching into the hatch.

“Incoming!” a cleric shouted.

Leonard moved to the side, pressing the sonic to try and get the lights working again. “Lily, keep an eye out.”

One of the lights flickered on, allowing them to see the upper half of the angel framed in the hatch opening. Leonard turned back to the lights again. A few more seconds ticked by before the lighting grid was isolated and the lights were restored. Looking forward, he saw four now inside the ship.

“Keep watching them,” he ordered the rest of the group. “Look anywhere you want except the eyes.”

“At least we can see them now,” Walter said. “Good work, Doctor.”

“Tell me that if we all make it out alive,” Leonard replied, walking over to the control panel for the door. “Oh great.”

“More bad news?” Lily asked.

“Would you consider the only way to open the door requiring all the power to be rerouted through here?”

The scientist grimaced. Sara had a similar expression on her face.

“Do it, Doctor,” Walter said.

“You realize we’ll lose the lights if he does this?” Lily told him.

“How long for?”

“Best case, a fraction of a second,” he replied, staring at the Angels. “But that’s plenty of time for them. And that’s only the best case scenario.”

“You don’t know for sure?” Walter frowned.

Leonard fixed him with a deadpan expression. “I don’t know about you, but this is my first time getting attacked by Weeping Angels on a crashed spaceship. I don’t have all the answers yet.”

Walter looked unimpressed. Sara smirked smugly before he turned to her.

“Bishop, either we take this chance, or we die trying,” Leonard said.

Walter hadn’t stopped glaring at Sara. “Dr. Lance, I’ve lost good clerics today. Do you trust this man?”

Sara flicked her eyes over to him and smiled. “One hundred percent.”

“And he isn’t some madman who’s going to get us all killed.”

The description was pretty apt. Leonard waited to hear Sara’s answer.

Sara’s face was neutral as she spoke. “I absolutely trust him.”

Leonard smiled briefly at her before going back to the panel. Walter muttered something to Sara, but Leonard didn’t bother to listen in. He had to get as many people out of here alive as possible. Lily peered in at the work from beside him as Walter issued combative orders to the clerics for when the lights would go out.

“Lily, once the lights go out, the wheel should release,” he told his friend. “I need you to spin it clockwise four times.”

“Ten.”

“No, only four turns,” he said.

Lily shrugged. “Yeah, I heard you. Four turns.”

He watched her closely as he moved back to the panel and plugged the screwdriver into the circuitry. Everyone was watching the Angels now. Walter prayed that God would be with them. Leonard knew it would take more than that to stop a Weeping Angel. 

“Count it down,” Leonard ordered him.

“Three, two, one...fire!”

The lights went dark and gunfire echoed in the corridor. Through the gunfire, the Angels could just barely be seen. Leonard heard Lily turning the wheel behind him the darkness. She shouted that the door was starting to open up. Turning around to confirm what she had said, Leonard felt some sense of temporary relief. “Fall back now!”

He let everyone else run ahead of him before going in after the last cleric as the door shut again. The group of survivors ran down the hall, stepping aside whenever necessary to open a doorway. They had a slight advantage on the Angels, and every second of it needed to count. Once they reach the flight deck, Leonard sealed them all inside, knowing it wouldn’t last forever, and moved over to the control panel.

“Door!” Lily shouted out as the wheel began to turn on the way they’d just come in. A cleric darted over and placed a small round device just above it. It magnetized the wheel, bringing it to a stop.

“Nothing can turn that wheel now,” the cleric said cockily.

“Wanna bet?” Leonard asked as a thud came and the wheel moved a fraction of an inch.

“Dear God,” another cleric uttered.

“Yeah, now you’re getting it. But you did buy us some time, so thanks for that.”

“If we need more, we need to seal the other doors,” Lily added as another wheel began to twist on the doorway to their left.

Walter gave the orders and the clerics followed them dutifully and stationed themselves outside every door.

“We’re surrounded now,” Sara declared. “How long do you think we have until they breach?”

“Maximum?” Leonard thought out the scenarios of how everything could happen. “Exactly five minutes and three seconds.”

“Nine.”

Leonard frowned and turned to Lily. “I said five minutes and three seconds.”

“I know, five minutes, three seconds.”

“So how come you said nine?”

Lily snorted. “I never said nine.”

“Yes, you did.”

All the wheels on the doors began to spin slowly.

“Leonard, we need to find another way out of here,” Sara said.

“Dr. Lance, we’re cornered. There isn’t one.”

“Wrong,” Leonard told Walter. “There is one. It’s a galaxy class ship that can go for years between landing on planets. If you’re going to be on a ship for years, what do you need?”

“That’s a long list,” Lily said.

Sara got it though. “Of course.”

“You know?” Lily raised an eyebrow. “What?”

“Air.”

Lily paused. “Still don’t get it.”

“Can you get in?” Sara asked.

“It’s a sealed unit, but they had to have installed it somehow,” Leonard approached the wall before him, noticing the clamps at the floor. “The whole wall should slide up if we release the clamps.”

Some clerics who weren’t guarding the doors hurried over to help him release the clamps. Once they were undone, the wall was pushed up to reveal the oxygen factory on the other side.

“It’s a forest,” Lily breathed in awe as she came up beside him. “There’s a forest on a spaceship. That’s how they can breathe for years!”

“Technical term is oxygen factory,” Sara explained to her. “But yeah, it’s a forest.”

“It’s also an escape route,” Leonard added.

Lily chuckled. “Eight.”

Leonard turned towards her quickly. “Huh?”

“What was that?” Sara asked, puzzled.

Lily suddenly seemed confused. “Nothing.”

Something was going on with Lily, and Leonard was starting to worry now. “Walter, can your clerics check the architecture and search for another escape route? I’d rather know where we’re going instead of running around as an easy Angel target.”

“On it,” Walter motioned his clerics forward. “The rest of you, stay where you are until the rad levels check out.”

* * *

Lily stepped up into the forest, unable to restrain her curiosity. She reached out and touched the tree. The bark and moss felt real beneath her fingers. “They’re actually trees.”

“Even better than trees,” Leonard smirked, walking over to her. “I have a feeling you’ll like them more once I show you this.”

He pulled a hunk of moss away. It came attached to a panel cover, and Lily was able to make out a mess of wires underneath.

“Whoa.”

“You could actually call them treeborgs,” he continued. “The branches become cables and sensors on the hull. They suck in starlight, process it just like any other tree-”

-and oxygen is produced,” Lily finished as it all clicked.

“Exactly. The vault is an ecopod that runs right through the heart of the ship. It even can rain in here. You’re standing in a forest in a bottle on a spaceship in a maze. So the big question is, have I impressed you yet, Lily Stein?”

He really had. She grinned. “Seven.”

“Seven?” he asked, pulling them back inside.

“What?” she looked him up and down, baffled as to why he had just acted out. “What’s the deal with seven?”

“You said seven.”

Lily shook her head. “No, I never said seven.”

“Yes,” Sara stepped forward. She seemed concerned. “You did. I heard it.”

Footsteps came from behind them, followed by Walter’s voice. “Doctor, an exit has been located on the far end of the ship. It’s in the Primary Flight Deck.”

“Excellent,” Leonard looked over to him. “That’s where we need to go anyways.”

“We’ll plot a safe path now.”

“You do that,” Leonard returned his attention to her. The way he was eyeing Lily made her feel a little like a lab specimen. She took a step back from him, shuddering a little. Aside from the dust in her eye earlier and not being able to move her hand on the bridge, she was completely fine.

“Doctor,” the Angel using Jason’s voice called in over Leonard’s communicator. “Excuse me? Are you there? It’s Angel Jason.”

Leonard heaved a sigh and pulled out the communicator. “This is the Doctor. Nice to hear from you, Angel Jason. How’s life? Oh wait, nevermind. Why are you calling me?”

“The Angels want to know what you want to achieve.”

“Achieve?” Leonard repeated, throwing a look of disbelief to Lily. “We’re not achieving anything. We’re passing our time, hoping to live to see tomorrow. It’s pretty decent on this ship actually. We’ve got consoles, a forest, maybe a comfy chair.”

“They are comfy,” Sara contributed from where she was leaning back in one.

“See, we’re fine. How about you and your cold stone bodies?”

“The Angels are feasting, sir.”

Lily shuddered. If the Angels were feasting on the energy, it meant they’d be getting stronger. The Angels getting stronger meant they’d have more power to come after them.

Angel Jason hadn’t finished yet though. “Soon we’ll have enough power to consume this vessel, this world, and all the stars and worlds beyond it. You should surrender now.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to trade?” Leonard asked. “After all, I have it on high authority that we have comfy chairs.”

“We have no need for comfy chairs.”

Sara snickered a little. “Even if we die, you can do it knowing you made an Angel say comfy chairs.”

Lily shook her head in amusement. “Six.”

Leonard’s head snapped up, and the scrutinizing gaze was back on her again. “Nice chatting, Jason, but there’s things I want to know. Tell me now what you’ve done to Lily?”

“Hey, there’s nothing wrong with me!” Lily protested.

“There’s something in her eye,” Angel Jason replied.

As he said that, Lily felt the urge to reach up and rub at her eye. There still was something in there, but it just wouldn’t get out.

“What is in her eye?” Leonard demanded.

“We are.”

Lily felt a chill go down her back. “What did he just say?”

Leonard lowered the communicator and stepped closer to her. “Lily, I need you to stay calm.”

“Don’t worry, I’m five.”

She stopped, realizing she had not said ‘fine’. Sara was now standing up from the chair. Lily swallowed, her eye starting to itch again.

“I mean, five,” she tried again. “No, fine! I’m fine!”

“Then how come you keep counting?” Sara asked.

“Counting?”

“You’ve been counting down from ten ever since you came on her, Lily,” Leonard told her.

“Why?”

“No idea.”

“What am I supposed to be counting down to?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t think it’s for New Years.”

“We shall take her,” Angel Jason interrupted. “We shall take all of you. We shall have dominion over all time and space.”

Lily saw anger fill Sara’s eyes and her fists clench.

“There’s power on this ship, but I don’t think it’s anywhere that much,” Leonard replied. “So try again.”

“Doctor, you should know there is more power on this ship than you yet understand. More than any of you could possibly understand.”

A loud, hideous shrieking filled the air. Lily winced at it. She swore she felt it echo inside her.

“What the hell was that?” Sara demanded.

Octavian looked up from where they were plotting the route. “They’re returned.”

“The Angels are laughing, Dr. Lance,” Angel Jason said.

“Laughing?” Sara frowned.

Leonard sighed. “And why are the Angels laughing?”

“Because you have yet to notice it,” Angel Jason replied. “How does it feel to be the clueless one, Doctor?”

Prisoner Zero had said the exact same thing to Leonard two years ago in the coma ward. Lily could see that he was remembering it too.

“Doctor,” Walter called.

“Quiet,” Leonard ordered. “There’s something I’ve-”

Another noise filled the room. It sounded like someone was tearing through the metal of the room, trying to get into them. The room seemed a little bit brighter now. Lily turned around, her eyes widening. High on the wall was a crack in the wall, light spilling out from it. It was exactly the same as the one she’d had in her bedroom wall that Prisoner Zero had come through.

“Missed,” Leonard finished.

Lily shook her head. “It’s like the crack in my bedroom wall when I was a kid.”

“Yeah,” Leonard murmured as the room shook.

“We have to move out!” Walter shouted.

“He’s right,” Sara agreed. “Leonard?”

“Do it. I’ll catch up.”

“Hey,” Lily crossed her arms. “We’re not leaving without you.”

“Yes, you are,” Leonard turned to Walter. “Bishop, get them out.”

“Dr. Lance, Dr. Stein,” Walter called from where he was entering the forest. “You need to come with us right now.”

“Not without him,” Lily shot back as Sara started to pull her away from the crack.

“Just go!” Leonard ordered.

* * *

“This isn’t good,” Leonard murmured once he got the readout from the screwdriver of the crack. 

Turning around, he saw the situation was no better. The Weeping Angels had made it into the room. They were all standing frozen, arms outstretched towards him. Getting through to the forest would be no easy feat for him. Then again, in over nine hundred years, nothing had been easy for him.

“You guys really love putting up a challenge,” he muttered as he made his way through the Angels, trying to keep as many in sight at a time as possible.

Something snagged the back of his leather jacket, keeping him from moving forward.

“Great.”

He expected to get sucked back in time or to have his neck snapped, but nothing happened. Turning his head, Leonard saw the Angels with their arms reached towards the crack in the wall.

“Not that I object to it, but why am I still alive?” he asked.

The Angels, of course, didn’t answer him. He was looking at as many of them as he could.

“There’s nothing good about this,” Leonard muttered, slowly slipping out of his leather jacket. “If it’s the power that brought you here, it’s pure time energy. It’s not power or anything you can feed on. What you’re trying to eat is the fire at the end of the universe.”

His arms came free, but the Angels didn’t notice.

“One last thing you should know,” he smirked as the ground rumbled. “I always have a way out.”

With that, he took off running into the woods.

* * *

Sara followed the soldiers through the forest with Lily at her side. Every now and then, she looked behind her to see if Leonard had followed yet. She wouldn’t deny that she was worried about leaving him alone with the Weeping Angels so close. At the same time, she reminded herself that she’d met his future self so many times. This Leonard still had those days to live out.

Lily stumbled a little as she walked. Sara stopped and watched the brunette sway with every step she took. Something was wrong with her. The Angels had already said there were in her eye. What were they going to do to this young version of Lily?   
“Lily?” Sara asked quietly.

The other woman stopped and stared blankly into space. She looked as if she was about to topple over.

Sara rushed over and took her by the shoulders to keep her upright. “Lily, tell me what’s wrong?”

“Four,” Lily croaked out, sliding to the ground.

Sara watched as the scientist continued to sway before bringing a hand to her head and curling up on the ground. “I need a med-scanner here now!”

A cleric brought forward the device. Sara bent down beside Lily, swallowing and reminding herself again that Lily couldn’t die here.

“Dr. Lance, we need to keep moving if we want to stay ahead of the Angels,” Walter warned her.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” she growled as she attached the cuff to Lily’s arm. “We wait for Leonard.”   
Walter approached her. “Our mission is to make the wreckage safe by neutralizing the Angels and any other hostile life forms that threat the colonists here.”

“Listen, Father Walter,” Sara snapped, her heart sinking as she saw Lily’s vitals on the scanner. “If Leonard is in the room, your priority is to keep him alive long enough to get everyone else home. It’s not always easy. Right now, this young woman is someone who needs to be keep alive at all costs and to reach her home safely. Leonard is in that same priority level. If he is dead back there, then I will never be able to forgive myself and everything will change.”

“What if I’m alive?”

Sara turned around to see Leonard, sans jacket, on top of a small hill and rolled her eyes. “You were waiting to make an entrance, weren’t you?”

“You can’t prove that,” he said as he made his way down the hill to where Lily was curled up. “Walter, the Angels are in the forest now. There needs to be visual contact on every line of approach unless you’re eager to die.”

Sara watched Walter nod and give orders to his clerics. Then she turned back to Leonard. “So how’d you make it past the Angels.”

“That crack in the wall,” Leonard nodded his head back to way they’d come. “All I had to do was tell them it was the end of the universe.”

Lily groaned from between them. “What was it?”

“The end of the universe,” he told her, frowning down at her before plucking the med scanner from Sara’s hands. “So what’s the problem here?

“She wasn’t walking normally, then she curled up on the ground,” Sara told him.

“What’s wrong with me?” Lily murmured.

“Nothing,” Sara lied, rubbing her back. “You’re fine, Lily.”

“Everything, she’s dying.”

Sara looked up sharply at him. “Seriously?”

“What, lying will make her get better?” he fired back. “Now, back to Lily. The Angels said something was in her eye. Is that supposed to mean something or are they just taunting us?”

“Leonard,” Lily whimpered, and Sara’s heart nearly shattered at the fear in her voice. “I’m scared.”   
“You should be, you’re dying,” Leonard said.

Sara sighed. “There has to be something we can do to save her.”

“I know, I know,” Leonard stood back up. “She stared at the Angel, looked into its eyes for too long-”

“Incoming Angel!” A cleric shouted.

Sara straightened up as another one reported an Angel sighting too. “Leonard, hurry.”

“I’m thinking,” he replied, closing his eyes. “She watched an Angel come out of the screen.”

“The image of an Angel is an Angel,” Lily uttered.

It clicked for Sara. “It’s a mental image living inside a functioning human mind.”

“If we stare at them to stop them, we don’t even blink,” Leonard picked up. “That’s what they want. We’re leaving our eyes as doorways for them to crawl inside. That’s what happened to Lily. There’s an Angel in her mind now.”

He stopped, looking horrorstruck at the thought. Sara looked down at her.

“Three,” Lily whispered. “Guys, I can feel it. It’s going to kill me.”

“Not happening,” Sara said firmly before looking back at Leonard. “So what’s the counting about?”

“How about we ask?” Leonard proposed as he pulled out the communicator. “Jason, care to enlighten the humans on why Lily is counting?”

“So she will be afraid.”

“Can you be specific on why she needs to be afraid?” Leonard demanded.

“For fun,” Angel Jason told him.

“That’s messed up,” Sara muttered as Lily shivered.

Leonard threw the communicator to the side, rage building in his features.

“Leonard,” Lily murmured as Sara took her hand. “Tell me what is happening to me? I need to know.”

“Basically, you have an Angel in the vision centers of your brain,” Leonard said. “Your mind is behaving like a virtual screen and the Angel is climbing out of it to come and shut you off.”

“What do I do?”

“We’re working on that,” Leonard turned to Sara. “Sara, what would we do if this was an actual screen.”

“Pull the plug, smash the screen, kill the power somehow,” she shrugged. “But I’m not knocking out my...friend.”

That was what Lily was right now. A friend.

“And it would let the Angel take over,” Leonard added. “We have to shut down the vision centers of her brain, preferably without blinding her permanently. It’ll starve the Angel out.”

The med scanner began to beep rapidly. Sara swallowed as she looked down at it. Lily had seconds to live.

“How would you starve your lungs?” Leonard asked.

“Stop breathing,” Sara answered automatically.

“That’ll do,” Leonard looked down at Lily. “Lily, shut your eyes.”

Lily shook her head. “No, I don’t want to.”

“Lily, listen to him!” Sara ordered. “You have to do this.”

The young woman took a deep breath and closed her eyes. On the med scanner, her vitals normalized. Sara sighed in relief. “She’s stabilizing.”

Leonard gave a small smile. Sara gave Lily’s hand a small squeeze of comfort.

* * *

Lily listened as the clerics called out the numbers of Angels approaching them. They just kept getting larger and larger. Soon, she knew they would have to move. Sara had insisted on running another med scan on her after her vitals evened out.

“You’re still weak,” Sara’s voice finally reported. “It’s dangerous if we try and move you.”

“Can I at least open my eyes?” she asked.

“No,” Leonard’s voice came in front of her. “If you open your eyes for more than a second, Lillian, you will die. The Angel is still inside you. It’s not stopped yet, just frozen. That countdown you were doing is gone now. You can’t open your eyes or the Angel will come out and kill you.”

“Great,” she sighed. “This means we’re down a set of eyes.”

“We’re too exposed here, Doctor,” Walter said behind her. “We need to move on for our safety.”

“Lily can’t move,” Leonard growled. “Besides, it doesn’t matter where we are in the forest. We’ll always be exposed to the Angels. Besides, it’s not in the plan.”

“You have a plan?” Sara’s voice was full of mirth.

“I’m between step four and one, Sara. But here’s what’s going to happen so far. Walter, stay here with the clerics and make sure Lily doesn’t die. If something happens to her, all of you will be personally responsible for it.”

Lily wished she could open her eyes and roll them.

“Sara,” Leonard continued. “You and I are going to search for the Primary Flight Deck, located...straight ahead in a quarter of a mile. Once we get there, we need to stabilize the wreckage, stop the Angels, and cure Lily so she can see the world without dying.”

“I like the sound of that,” Lily called out. She really did want to see more of the universe. Being dead would put a damper on that.

“And you’re going to do all this how?”

“You’ll see, Sara. It’s a work in progress.”   
“I will be coming with you, Doctor,” Walter announced. “My clerics will take good care of Dr. Stein. They are my best men, and I have full faith they will lay down their lives for her protection.”

“I don’t need you,” Leonard said.

“That doesn’t matter,” Walter replied.

“Wait for it,” Sara whispered beside her.

“Wherever Dr. Lance is going, I will also be going.”

“There it is,” Sara muttered, her hand disappearing from Lily’s grip. Lily felt a pang of sympathy for her as she heard footsteps recede from where she sat.

“Why, are you two engaged or something?” Leonard mocked.

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

Lily held back a snort. If it was the kind of engagement she had with Ray, it’d never last. Sara and Leonard had an undeniable chemistry. They were something in Leonard’s future for sure.

“Marco,” Walter called. “Until I return, you’re in charge.”

“Yessir!”

Lily sighed from where she was sitting. “Can I please come with you guys?”

“Dr. Stein, you’d only slow us down,” Walter said, his voice fainter than it was a moment ago.

“Ugh,” Lily huffed. He had a good point on that. But she didn’t want to be stuck here. She felt useless like this.

Someone sat beside her before she heard Leonard’s voice. “Lily, you’ll be safer here. We won’t be able to protect you if we keep on moving.”

“Well, other senses compensate when one goes down,” she told him. “Maybe if I can’t see, then I can hear and tell you guys about the Angels.”

“That’s a risk I’m not willing to take,” he told her. “I will come back for you as soon as I can, Lily. I promise that. You won’t even realize I was gone.”

“You said that when I was eight years old,” she muttered.

“And I came back,” he said as she heard him stand up. “Clerics, I wish you the best of luck. Don’t let her open her eyes and don’t let the Angels advance. Sara, wait up. I need your computer.”

Lily sighed and listened to his footsteps fall away. Her heart sank a little as she bowed her head. She played with her hands in her lap, running one finger over the place where her engagement ring would be. It was back on her nightstand at home. She had taken it off that night since she couldn’t stop fiddling with it on her finger and fall asleep.

Another pair of hands closed over hers. She looked up, wishing she could see who it was. At least they felt warm and human, so it wasn’t an Angel.

“Lily,” Leonard’s voice came from in front of her. “You have to start trusting me. It’s never been more important.”

She frowned. “How can I trust someone who doesn’t always tell the truth? You told me once you were a madman and a thief.”

“I wouldn’t need you to trust me if I always told you the truth,” he chuckled. “But I am sorry for the things I haven’t told you.”

Lily wondered what he was hiding from her. “How can that crack in my wall be here too?”

“I’m working on finding that out,” he answered. “Now listen to me. Do you recall what I said to you when you were eight?”

“You said a lot of things then. Which one do you mean?”

“That’s not the point,” he told her, giving her hands a squeeze. “Lily, you have to remember. Understand?”

The warmth over her hands disappeared as she tilted her head. “Remember what?”

Leonard didn’t answer.

* * *

“What are you looking at?”

Leonard looked to see Sara peering at the screen of the communicator he was holding. “The readings from the crack in the wall.”

“Mmhm,” Sara hummed. “So how is a crack in the wall the end of the universe?”

“I don’t know,” he replied honestly, stepping over a root. “But one day, I think there’s going to be a very big bang. It’ll be big enough to crack every moment in history, past, present, and future.”

Sara pursed her lips. “And is that possible? And how can one do such a thing?”

“Probably simpler than one being engaged in a manner of speaking,” he replied.

The blonde stopped and looked back at him. “Jealous?”

“Curious,” Leonard corrected, although he did feel the green-eyed monster prodding at him.

“Well, a man or woman in uniform,” Sara shrugged.

Walter glared back at them before stepping forward. “Dr. Lance is in my personal custody. I was the one who released her from the Stormcage Containment Facility four days ago. I am the one who is legally responsible for her until she has completed our mission and earned her pardon.”

Leonard turned to the woman in question. Yet another piece of the puzzle surrounding her had been uncovered. Sara was doing time in Stormcage, so clearly she didn’t have a clean history. That didn’t bother him though, as his own history was far from spotless.

“That is the status of how I am connected to her,” Walter finished before turning back around and continuing to lead them forward.

Leonard glanced over at Sara and raised an eyebrow. “So, Stormcage, huh?”

The communicator beeped and Leonard pulled it up for them both to see.

“What are we looking at now?” Sara inquired.

“The date of the explosion that caused the crack,” Leonard murmured. “I’m switching it from the base code of the universe.”

“Good, I haven’t mastered that one quite yet,” Sara said. “I’m getting close though.”

The date translated, and Leonard studied it.

“It’s in Lily’s time,” Sara murmured.

Leonard nodded. “And the year I picked her up in.”

* * *

Lily rocked back and forth on the log she was sitting on. “Anything interesting out there?”

“The Angels are still assembling,” a cleric called.

A tearing noise cut through the air.

“You getting this too?” the same cleric asked.

“The trees? Yeah, it’s happening.”

Lily swung her head from side to side, wishing she could open her eyes. “What’s happening to the trees?”

“The treeborgs are being ripped apart by the Angels, ma’am.”

“And they’re taking out the lights,” a third cleric shouted.

Lily took a deep breath. “So the trees are going out?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

She shuddered and hoped that Leonard would be back soon.

“Angles keep advancing, sir,” the second cleric called.

“Weapons primed, combat distance five feet,” the first one replied. “Wait for it.”

Lily felt frustrated that she had to keep her eyes closed as she stood up. “What else is happening?’

“We’ve got this handled,” the third cleric said. “Keep your eyes shut, ma’am.”

She sighed and sat back down. Weapons clicked into position around her. Lily clenched her hands into fists as a ripping sound cut through the air.

“The ship’s not on fire, is it?” a fourth cleric asked.

“Impossible,” the second said. “The compressors would have taken care of it then.”

Something bright shined against her face. Lily leaned back from it.

“Marco, the Angels have gone,” the second cleric said. “Where’d they go?”

“The Angels are gone?” Lily clarified, standing up again.

“There’s still movement out there,” the first cleric, Marco, explained. “But it’s away from us now. It’s like they’re running away.”

“Good,” she murmured. “But what are they running away from? It can’t be us. After all, we were the ones they were hunting.”

Marco ignored her. “Richard, Duke, I need you to get a closer look at that.”

“Yessir,” Lily heard the third and fourth clerics say before footfalls ran past her.

“What are you looking at?” Lily asked.

“It’s like some kind of curtain, but made of energy,” Marco told her. “Keeps shifting around. It makes you feel weird or sick.”

Lily did feel a little off, but then again she apparently had a Weeping Angel living inside of her. “Think that’s why the Angels were scared off?”

“Nothing can scare those things.”

She didn’t believe that. Everyone was afraid of something, no matter who they were. Slowly, she shifted around until she felt the light hit her fully in the face. Then she took a few slow steps forward before bumping into someone.

“What are you doing?” Marco asked her.

“Am I facing the light?”

“Ma’am, you can’t open your eyes.”

“Not for more than a second,” Lily repeated Leonard’s words. “Leonard told me that. I have a little time left. I only got to three on the countdown. But I have to see this.”

“Ma’am-”

“It will be quick,” she said firmly. “Am I facing it or not?”

A pair of hands adjusted her slightly. “Do it quickly.”

Lily snapped her eyes open quickly. Through the trees, she could see a bright light breaking through the darkness ahead of her. There was a crack in the center of the light. She recognized the shape it was in. It was practically the same one.

“It’s exactly like the crack in my wall,” she uttered.

“Ma’am,” Marco warned. “Close your eyes now.”

Lily shook her head as her knees buckled. “It’s following me. How is it following me?”

She didn’t realize she was falling until Marco caught her and placed a hand over her eyes. Remembering the Angel, she closed them again. The word ‘two’ had almost been on her lips.

“Are you okay?”

She shook her head, unable to get the shape of the crack out of her mind. “I don’t know.”

* * *

When they got to the Primary Flight Deck, they couldn’t get in the main pathway. However, Walter had found a service hatch that they could access. Leonard and Sara watched his back, keeping their eyes open for Angels. He noticed that the blonde was getting restless.

“You better hurry, Walter,” she said after a few minutes. “Time’s running out.”

Leonard, who had been thinking about the crack in the wall, frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It’s an expression, crook.”

“I know,” he nodded. “But what if time could run out?”

Sara looked puzzled. “Want to tell me where you’re going with this?”

“Hatch is open,” Walter said.

Leonard ignored him. “There are cracks in time, but is time running out of them? Maybe that’s why she didn’t know what Daleks were.”

Sara nodded. “Keep going.”

“Time can shift or change or even be rewritten,” he continued. Maybe that crack in Lily’s wall was how she came to exist. Perhaps she was a product of it implanted with memories of parents who never existed. That was why she was an aberration.

“Well, whatever can be done to time, we’re losing it,” Walter interrupted. “Dr. Lance, get through now.”

Sara crawled through the service hatch with a wink. “See you on the other side.”

“See you,” Leonard murmured. He was still thinking about time.

“Doctor,” Walter called.

Leonard ignored him. He remembered the one trip he’d made eons ago to Isaac Newton. The third law of gravity was that every action had an equal and opposite reaction. But sometimes the equal action and the opposite action were separate.

“Time can be rewritten,” he murmured aloud. “Time can be unwritten.”

“What?” Walter asked.

Leonard sighed. “I haven’t even noticed the things happening around me. A giant Cyberman goes around Victorian London, Daleks and Cybers attack cities, a wormhole opens in the sky, and no one can remember any of it.”

“The Angels could be on us at any second,” Walter grabbed his shoulder. “We have to move!”

“Take your hands off me,” Leonard snarled, shrugging away from Walter. “We have a worse problem than the Angels.”

“Is that even possible?”

The lights went dark and a crack came from behind Leonard. When he spun back around, there was an Angel. Its arm was around Walter’s neck, although the man was gripping the stone fist tightly.

“Was this what you meant by worse?” the bishop choked out.

* * *

“Marco, want me to get a closer look at the crack?” the second cleric, Terry, asked aloud.

“Yeah, go for it, just don’t hang too close.”

Lily swung her head towards where she believed Marco to be as Terry left them. “You sent two men to it already though. Shouldn’t you wait for them to come back?”

“The other two?” Marco sounded confused.

“The clerics you sent to investigate it,” Lily said. “Richard and Duke.”

“I didn’t send anyone,” Marco replied. “And Richard and who?”

“Richard and Duke,” Lily repeated. “I know they were here.”

“There has never been a Richard or a Duke on this mission,” Marco told her. “I swear.”

“No,” Lily shook her head. “Before you sent Terry, you sent Richard and Duke to look at the light. I remember them, but somehow you can’t. Something must have happened when they went to go see the light.”

“Sorry, Terry?”

The confusion in his voice made her tense up. “Yes, Terry.”

“I’m sorry,” Marco apologized. “Who’s Terry?”

“He was here a few seconds ago!” Lily exclaimed. “How do you not remember?”

“Ma’am,” Marco said slowly. “There has never been a Terry. It has always been the two of us here.”

Lily ran her hands through her hair. Something was wrong with that light. You couldn’t just forget someone like that. There had to be something about it. Whatever it was, she hoped it wouldn’t make everyone forget her too.

“I’m going to go get a closer look at the light,” Marco told her. “I won’t get to close, so you don’t have to worry about anything.”

“That’s probably what the others thought too,” Lily shot back at him quickly. “Don’t leave me alone, okay?”

“I have to see what it is,” Marco said as he opened something and placed something in her hands. “This is a spare communicator. I will stay in touch the entire time.”

“Don’t do this,” Lily warned. “You won’t come back, just like Richard and Duke and Terry.”

“None of those people existed,” Marco snapped before exhaling. “I will be gone two minutes, then I’ll come right back.”

Lily listened to his footsteps fade away as she sat alone in the forest.

* * *

“No,” Leonard shook his head, answering the question and reacting to the situation Walter was now in the same word.

“It’s not going to let me go,” Walter said. “Not while you’re looking at it.”

“If I do, then it’s still going to kill you.”

“Doctor,” Walter closed his eyes for a moment. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s going to kill me anyways. It’s too tight for me to escape. Just leave me and save yourself.”

“I won’t let that happen.”

“Sir,” Leonard flinched a little at the title. “There’s nothing you can do. I’m already dead.”

He was right. Leonard hated it, but Walter was right. However, the man wasn’t done yet.

“There is something you need to know before you go,” Walter gasped. “The Canary. You can’t trust her.”

“The Canary?” Leonard repeated. 

“Sara Lance,” Walter explained. “You think you know her, but you don’t. You have no idea who or what she is.”

“So tell me,” Leonard demanded.

“I’ve said more than I should. Now go.”

“Why is she in the Stormcage?” Leonard asked. “Tell me that. Or why you called her the Canary.”

“She was an assassin,” Walter told him. “That was what they called her. She killed many people, but only one is why she’s in there. Sara Lance murdered a good man, one who was a hero to many people.”

Leonard stared at him. “Who was he?”

“I can’t tell you, and you wouldn’t want to know,” Walter tried to turn back to look at the forest. “You need to leave me now before the Angels come.”

“You know as soon as I turn away, you’ll die.”

Walter nodded. “I know. I’ll die knowing my courage didn’t desert me in the end. I thank God for that. May the path you take from here on out be blessed to bring you and your friend to safety.”

Leonard resisted the urge to roll his eyes. In his life, there was no safe path. “Goodbye, Walter. Thank you for getting me this far.”

“You can make it from here. I have faith.”

Faith was useless. Luck was what he needed. “Are you ready?”

“Do it.”

Leonard made for the hatch, crawling in quickly as he heard Walter’s neck snap. He shut the door quickly and sealed it off before sitting back down on the ground. Walter was another name he’d failed now. Another face among the sea of many people who had died because of him.

“Leonard?”

Sara was approaching him. Leonard looked at the woman who had killed so many. “Walter’s dead. An Angel got him.”

“I’m sorry,” Sara apologized. “I’ve found a teleport here. It needs some repairs, but if I can get it working, then Lily and the others can be beamed into here.”

“You’re wasting your time,” Leonard warned as he approached the teleport and saw the dire state of it. “It’s too dead to work. In the meantime, I need to use your communicator.”

* * *

“Marco?” Lily asked, holding up the communicator. “Are you still here?”

“I’m here,” the voice on the other end answered, reassuring her slightly. “I’m fine. I’m pretty close to it now. Nothing’s happened.”

“In any other situation, I would encourage you to investigate more,” Lily told him. “But you need to come back from it now.”

“You know, it’s weird looking at it. It feels really-”

Radio static cut him off.

“Feels really what?” Lily frowned. “Marco, are you still there?”

No reply came. Lily tried to change the frequency and tried again, but received no reply. A feeling of dread blanketed her as she realized Marco was gone just like the others. She was now on her own against the Angels. Even worse, she was at a disadvantage with her eyes closed against them.

“Damn it,” she murmured.

The static cleared. “Lily?”

It wasn’t Marco’s voice. However, it was Leonard’s.

“Lily, are you there?’ his voice asked.

“Leonard?” she answered cautiously.

“Correct. Are you still where we left you?”

“Yeah,” she nodded. “But the clerics are gone now. There was a light and all of them walked into it. They went over time, but they all started to forget each other. It was like they were erased from each other’s memories”

“Of course they were,” Leonard replied solemnly.

“What is that light?” she heard Sara inquire in the background.

“Time running out. Lily, I shouldn’t have left you back there. I messed up.”

That wasn’t a very reassuring thing to hear. “So what now?”

“You have to come to us at the Primary Flight deck,” Leonard told her. “It’s on the other end of the forest.”

“Okay, sure,” Lily nodded. “How do you want me to do that when I have my eyes closed? Or can I open them?”

“Keep them shut and turn around slowly.”

“What for?”

“Just keeping turning until you can hear the sonic screwdriver,” Leonard ordered. “As soon as it does, that means you’re facing the right way. Follow the sound and you’ll make it here.”

“Okay,” Lily rose to her feet and turned around slowly. Halfway through, she could hear the buzzing of Leonard’s screwdriver. “I hear it.”

“Good,” she could hear a little relief in his voice. “Now come towards it. There’s time energy coming of that crack. You have to stay ahead of it.”

“At any time during thinking of this plan did you consider the murderous Angels in the forest?” Lily asked as she started to walk forward slowly.

“I know, but they can only kill you.”

“The time energy just erases me, right?” she muttered.

“Keep moving, Lily.”

“Am I right?” she demanded.

“Yes,” Leonard sighed on the other end. “If it catches up to you, it will be like you were never born. Every moment of your existence gets erased. So don’t let it get to you by keeping your eyes shut and moving forward.”

Lily kept walking forward, holding the communicator. 

“You’re putting a lot of faith in that,” Sara said in the background.

“We’re running out of options unless you have something else, Sara,” Lily heard Leonard snap. “Lily, I’m sending your communicator software for a proximity detector. It’ll beep if there’s something in your way, so you won’t have to worry about running into a tree. Just keep turning until the beeping stops, then go forward. The forest is full of Angels, and you need to walk like you have your eyes open.”

The communicator began to beep quickly. Lily turned to her left, but it continued to beep. It only stopped once she moved around one hundred and eighty degrees. Once she heard the screwdriver’s uninterrupted buzzing, she started trekking forward again. She couldn’t help but wonder if it was a tree or an Angel she’d just moved around.

“What’s that time energy going to do?” Lily asked

“It’s eating away at the surroundings,” Leonard replied. “Lily, just keep moving. You have to stay ahead of it.”

“Is there any way to shut it?” she pressed.

“Yes,” Leonard said quickly. “But keep walking. Don’t worry about it.”

“How do we shut it?”

“It needs a big complicated space-time event.”

“Like what?”

“Lily-”

“Leonard,” Lily hissed. “You tell me right now what it is!”

“This really isn’t-” he warned.

“No, you tell me!”

“Like you, Lillian!” Leonard shouted. “A time aberration like you could shut it down but you’d be erased too.”

Lily stopped short at his words. “What did you just say?”

“Lily-” Leonard began as a high pitched whining rang through the air.

“What is a time aberration?” she asked, her heart starting to beat faster. Whatever it was, it didn’t sound like a good thing.

“You shouldn’t exist,” her friend said quickly. “I’ll explain later. But right now, you are surrounded by Angels.”

Lily started to breathe a little faster. “What?”

“It’s going to be hard, but you can get around the Angels,” Leonard told her. “You can do it though. The Angels are running scared. They’re not going to care about you-”

“ _ Because I’m a time aberration...whatever that is, _ ” the scientist thought to herself bitterly.

“-and because you’re there, they think you can see them. Their defense mechanism is going to kick in and they’ll be stone. So walk like you can see and don’t-”

“Open my eyes?” she finished. “I know that pretty well by now.”

Lily sighed and put one foot in front of the other. She focused on the communicator and the buzzing and beeping that came from it. The aberration thing still pestered her, but she ignored it. Right now, survival was on her mind. Fear was keeping her going. Later, when this was all settled, she could get Leonard to tell her everything about it and why she shouldn’t exist.

Her foot caught on something and she tumbled forward hard. The communicator fell out of her hand and landed somewhere. Lily almost opened her eyes on the impact, but kept them closed just barely. She sat up and started to feel around for the communicator. Something started to rumble behind her, as if stone was shifting.

“No, no, no,” she muttered desperately. “Where are you?”

Something warm covered her body. A second later, a pair of arms enveloped her and Lily screamed.

* * *

Leonard looked up as soon as he heard Lily’s scream. She was standing on the teleport pad now. Sara was in front of her, holding her in a tight hug. Apparently, she had gotten the teleport working.

“Keep your eyes closed,” Sara ordered, helping her off the pad. “You’ve been teleported into the Primary Flight Deck. I’m here, and so is Leonard. We’re all safe.”

“For the time being,” Leonard reminded her.

“Yeah, that,” Sara shrugged before smirking at him. “Told you I could get the teleport running.”

“Yeah, yeah, you did,” he nodded at her. “Sara, I could kiss you right now for that.”

Sara snorted. “Maybe when you’re older.”

Before he could return the banter, the alarms for the ship’s power began to go off.

“Do I want to know what that was?” Lily asked.

“That would be our stony friends draining the last of the ship’s power,” Leonard told her, stepping away from the control panel. “It means the shield that’s been protecting us from the Angels is going to release.”

Once he finished speaking, the shields before them began to rise. Sara stepped forward so she was in front of Lily almost protectively. Leonard glanced back at them briefly before watching the shield pull up to reveal the army of Weeping Angels before him. One of them was standing slightly ahead of the others.

“Well,” he crossed his arms. “You must be Angel Jason.”

“Correct,” Jason’s voice came from the communicator in Leonard’s hand and from the Angel before him. “The time field is coming. It will destroy our reality.”

“Good,” Leonard shrugged. “Now what the hell do you want?”

“There is a rupture in time,” Angel Jason said. “The Angels and myself have calculated that throwing the aberration you have into it will close the crack and save all of us.”

Lily gasped behind him. Leonard keep staring at the Angels. “Why should I do a thing like that?”

“Because you would be saved. The tales of Gallifrey’s fall are known to the universe. You will do whatever it takes to save yourself. You are a complicated space-time event like the aberration, but only because you are a time traveler. Better to sacrifice the aberration than yourself.”

“Oh really?” he drawled out.

“No,” Sara strode up beside him. “Don’t use yourself or Lily. I’ve time traveled. I’m a complicated space-time event. Worst comes to worst, throw me in.   
“The Angels are more complicated than you, Sara,” Leonard told her. “No offense. I’m sure Lily must be more complicated than one Angel though-”

“Thanks,” a bitter, mumbled reply came from behind him.

“But I’m as complicated as all of them,” Leonard smiled as an idea struck him. “Sara, you and Lily get a grip.”

Sara glared at him. “Did you just-”

“I mean it literally.”

She smiled too. “Then that’s another matter.”

“Please stop your bantering,” Angel Jason said. “The Angels need you to sacrifice yourself now to the crack in time.”

“Cute,” Leonard said, backing up to the control panel. “But here’s the thing, Jason. The Angels are draining all the power from the  _ Byzantium _ . Every last bit of it has gone to you and your army. Because you’ve been so greedy, you have completely forgotten when you’re standing. The gravity of the situation has escaped you. Although when I say gravity of the situation…”

He reached the control panel as the alarms for the artificial gravity went off. “I think I mean soon to be lack of.”

Leonard  grabbed onto part of the panel as the world tilted a moment later. Looking over, he saw Sara and Lily doing the same thing. Behind them, the Angels were falling back into the forest and straight to the crack. It glowed brighter and brighter with every Angel that fell in.

The whole world became white before the crack in the wall sealed.

* * *

“Everything hurts,” Lily moaned on the beach after they had climbed out of the wreckage and found the clerics who hadn’t gone in.

“You were the one who closed your eyes the whole time we climbed out the Byzantium,” Leonard told her.

Lily shrugged and gazed at the beach around her. It felt good to be able to see again.

“You didn’t have,” he continued. “I told you that the Angels all fell into the time field. Because of it, the Angel in your memory never existed. It won’t ever hurt you again.”

“So how come I remember everything?” she asked him. “None of the clerics remembered each other after they went into the light. I could remember all of them.”

“Because you’re become a time traveller, Lily. Your perception of the universe has been changed forever. You’ve got that going for you now.”

“Okay,” she nodded. “What about the crack? Are the people here threatened by it?”

“No,” Leonard shook his head. “It’s gone. But the explosion that created it is still out there somewhere in time.”

Another thought hit her. “So do I really remember everything because I’m a time traveler? Or is it because I’m a time aberration?”

Leonard’s face fell. “Lily-”

“Don’t ‘Lily’ me,” she said coldly. “You said I wasn’t supposed to exist. What does that mean?”

Leonard sighed and looked out at the water ahead of them. “Remember when I asked about your parents?”

She nodded. “You acted weirder then.”

“Lily, they never existed. There never has been a Martin or Clarissa Stein. There was a crack in your bedroom wall in your house. I think it created you. It gave you false memories, a false life with the aunt who lived there.”

It was a lot to wrap her head around. Lily turned away from him. “I need a moment to process this.”

She walked away from Leonard. A stray tear started to fall down her face as she thought of her life, and how it was such a lie now.

* * *

Leonard watched Lily walk to the edge of the beach before walking over to Sara. Four clerics stood a distance from here, all armed. She was watching Lily with an unreadable look on her face. As soon as Leonard stepped beside her, a mischievous smile crossed her lips. Leonard returned it.

“So,” the blonde said. “You, me, handcuffs. Is this how it’s always going to end?”

She raised her wrists to reveal Stormcage prison grade handcuffs restraining her wrists. A horrible memory of the library came back to Leonard. He could see her dying all over again.

“So what happens now?” he asked her, trying to distract himself from thinking of her death.

“Well, the boys told me the prison ship is in orbit,” Sara explained, nodding at the clerics. “They’ll beam me up any second now. Maybe they’ll give me a pardon this time for all I did here. Maybe.”

“That’s good,” he said emotionlessly.

Sara glanced at where Lily was standing. “I overheard you telling Lily about how she’s a time aberration.”

“Yeah,” he nodded.

“How do you think she’s taking it?”

“Revealing she’s an aberration and a part of her childhood is a lie?” Leonard turned to her. “You already knew, didn’t you?”

“Maybe I did, maybe I didn’t,” she shrugged innocently. “However, you’re seeing this in one view. Here’s something to dwell on.”

Leonard stepped to stand in front of her.

“Has Lily always been the time aberration?” Sara asked. “Or is she a part of the timeline that became an aberration when something changed.”

Leonard tilted his head at her. “Can I at least get a hint to which it is?”

Sara shook her head. “Spoilers.”

“That’s fine, I’ll try something else,” he said as Lily started to come back their way. “Walter told me that you were an assassin, but you killed a man and that’s what got you into Stormcage.”

Sara’s smile faded. “That’s right.”

“A good man killed by the Canary.”

“Yeah,” Sara nodded. “A very good man. The best man I’ve ever known. He was...a hero. A legend, some called him.”

“Who?” Leonard asked.

The smile returned to her face. “It’s a long story, Leonard. It has to be lived. No sneak peeks.”

“You won’t even give your future husband at least one?” Lily teased as she came back their way. 

“You won’t let that go, will you?” Sara laughed. “But fine, I’ll give you one. I’ll see both of you soon when the Pandorica opens.”

Leonard shook his head. “The Pandorica is a fairy tale, Dr. Lance.”

“Aren’t we all?” Sara replied. “See you then. I have good memories of it.”

A beep came from Sara’s handcuffs, and the blonde sighed. “Time to go.”

“Bye, Sara,” Lily nodded.

“See you soon, Lily.”

“One last thing,” Leonard faced Sara. “Can I trust you, Sara Lance?”

“You could,” Sara grinned. “But why’s that any fun?”

A gust of wind surrounded Sara like the ones that had beamed down the clerics. She was still smiling as she disappeared into it.

* * *

“Welcome back, Dr. Lance.”

Sara let her mask fall as she sighed and looked to the guards around her. “May I please request a visit?”

“You need to be transported to the Stormcage,” the head guard said. “You were released solely for this mission.”

“I know,” Sara nodded. “It won’t take long. I just need to see someone.”

“Who do you wish to see?”

Sara smiled. “My mother. She lives on Earth. But let me choose the date.”

* * *

 

“I want to go home.”

Leonard turned around. Lily was sitting in the chair beside the TARDIS console. She hadn’t said much to him since the aberration reveal. Now, he knew what was happening. Lily had decided that she had had enough of time travel. This always happened whenever he found a companion. At least she was leaving while she was still alive.

“Going back to your stuff, huh?” he asked.

Lily stood up and shook her head. “No, not like that. I’m not leaving. I just need to see something. Can you land in my bedroom?”

He felt more relieved as he put in the coordinates to return to Lily’s home. Keeping his promise, he made sure to get her back on the same night, but making sure she’d only been gone for a few minutes. Lily didn’t say anything for the entire journey. Once they’d landed, she opened the door and stepped out. Leonard followed her, his eyes spotting the white wedding dress.

“I assume that’s part of your ‘stuff’?” he asked as Lily wandered over to a nightstand beside her bed.

“Yeah,” she nodded, picking something up. “This is the same night we left, right?”

“It is. I wasn’t late this time.”

Lily cracked a smile. “Thanks.”

She walked back over to him, the palm of her hand facing up and open. On it was a ring. Leonard stared a little longer and realized it was an engagement ring. He looked from it up to Lily.

“I’m supposed to be getting married in the morning,” she explained, wrapping her hand around the ring.

“And yet you left your engagement ring here?” he frowned.

The scientist shifted from foot to foot. “It was bugging me when I was trying to fall asleep earlier. I took it off and forgot to put it back on when I heard you.”

“It’s a nice ring,” he complimented. “So who’s the lucky guy?”

“You met him.”

Leonard smirked. “It’s not that Boy Scout, is it?”

Lily glared at him. “His name is Ray.”

“Shame,” Leonard shook his head. “I thought you’d go for the good looking one.”

She rolled her eyes at him. “Well, Ray proposed. And I would have married him tomorrow.”

Her word choice made him pause. “Would have.”

“You told me I was a time aberration,” Lily said slowly, walking over to her wedding dress. “Before that, I knew I’d come back, go back to sleep, wake up, and marry the man I loved. Then the Angels happened, and you told me because I’m an aberration, I should have never existed. You told me the crack created me. I don’t belong living this life.”

Leonard watched as she walked over to a notebook and pulled out a piece of paper. “Lily, what are you doing?”

“Saying goodbye to Ray,” Lily answered as she sat down on her bed. “I shouldn’t be here. I probably messed up the course of events in his life by just existing. Actually, I probably did it to a lot of people. So I’m taking myself out of the equation.”

“Lillian,” Leonard warned, fearing for what she was about to do. “What is your plan?”

“To keep travelling,” she smiled. “I can go around with you in the TARDIS. You can show me the universe. We can keep running into Sara. It’ll be an adventure forever.”

“And that’s the thing,” Leonard snatched the paper she was writing on from here. “You can’t live forever, Lily. You age and die. I am nine hundred and seven years old. I don’t die, I change. You can’t keep running forever. Just because you’re an aberration doesn’t mean you can live your life here.”

“But you said-”   
“I say many things,” he told her. “But listen to this. I don’t know why you’re an aberration. There’s something about you, Lily. I need to figure out why you exist. There’s got to be a reason behind it. Now, get in the TARDIS.”

“What?” Lily frowned as he pulled her up from the bed. “Hey!”

“Just get in,” he told her, getting her through the door.

Lily’s engagement ring had fallen onto the floor. Leonard bent down to pick it up. As he rose to his feet, the clock face changed to 12:00 and the date flicked over one day. He stopped and stared at it. It was the exact same date that he and Sara had traced back to for the explosion that created the cracks in time.

Oh this was bad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time- Ray's back!


End file.
